The Narrator

Who’s Telling the Story?

I can…

• I can differentiate between the author and the narrator.

• I can analyze the role of the narrator in a story and how changing the narrator changes the story.

• I can use evidence to prove that a character is an unreliable or reliable narrator.

Standards

• 3003.8.7 Analyze the narration and point of view (e.g., first person, third-person objective, third-person limited, third-person omniscient) in complex literary texts, in which the narrator and point of view may shift with multiple characters acting as narrators and/or with some characters serving as unreliable narrators.

Agenda

1st half⁻Foreign words⁻Finish Presentations⁻Reliable and Unreliable Narrator⁻Group Work: The Big Questions

2nd half⁻Independent Practice: Read chapters 8-10. Choose one scene from the novel and rewrite it as if it were in the point of view of another character. ie: Jem, Dill, Atticus, Calpurnia, etc.

Narrator

• The person who tells the story to the audience.Types of Narrators

1st person Innocent Eye2nd person Multiple Narrators3rd person Unreliable Narrator

omniscientlimited omniscientObjective

REMEMBER

The NARRATOR can be, but is seldom

the AUTHOR .

Innocent Eye

• The story is told through the eyes of a child (his/her judgment being different from that of an adult).

Unreliable Narrator

• An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised.

• You can’t trust the unreliable narrator!!!

Reliable or Unreliable?1. Look for direct and indirect characterization2. Look for prejudices in speech and thoughts.3. Examine religion, gender, race and age.4. Is the narrator telling you everything he or she knows?5. Is the narrator mentally stable?6. Does he or she know what he or she is talking about?7. Does this person have the authority to relate the

events? Did he or she experience them from someone else or did he or she experience them first hand?

8. Why is the narrator telling the story? Confession? Bragging? To reveal a moral? (This is not a reflection of why the AUTHOR told the story, but why the CHARACTER is telling the story.)

The Big QuestionIs Scout an unreliable narrator?

Don’t forget to support your answer with evidence from the

text.

Some more interesting questions…• Why might Harper Lee tell the story from an

adult perspective, narrated many years after the fact?

• In the first seven chapters, can you find statements that remind us of an adult point of view? Or does the adult narrator enter completely into the world of her childhood?

• How would this story be narrated, in the third person, from the point of view of Dill’s fabulous imagination?

Independent Practice

•Read chapters 8-10.•Choose one scene from the

novel and rewrite it as if it were in the point of view of another character. ie: Jem, Dill, Atticus, Calpurnia, etc.

Closure

Journal: In your opinion, what personal traits would make a narrator unreliable?