An interesting exercise to foreground your understanding of narrative is to think about how narratives would be different if they had some aspect of the narrative style changed. For instance, imagine The Great Gatsby told through an objective, omniscient third-person narrator. How different would this be from Nick's story? Would Nick feature very much at all?
By the way, speaking of The Great Gatsby, 12C, your revision guides should, I hope, have got to you by now--if not, then come and pick one up from the staffroom. As some of you were worryingly pro-active, I have a few named copies which probably need to go to other homes... Let me know.
True, and with the absence of Nick's opinion clouding our judgement, Gatsby would probably not appear to be so "great" and his relationship with Daisy would be seen as disloyal and corrupt rather than romantic.
ReplyDeleteGood point. Though I suppose an objective narrator might not have that bias either, and would possibly see it all as rather sad and trivial... which is probably why he didn't write a novel about it. One reason Nick is narrator is that he cares--he really thinks that the story has a point to it, that it has a message worth telling people--and that tells us as much about him as anything...
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