Journal 70: Narrator

A narrator is a person telling the story in a story. It can be in the first person view, where the narrator is one of the characters in the story. It can also be in the third person view, where the narrator is not any character from the story. When we read a story, we rely on the narrator to tell us what information we should need to understand and follow along with the story. In other words, if the narrator doesn't tell us anything and only describes briefly about the story, we would never know what the character is thinking and what the story is about. In the story "Tell Tale-Hearts", the narrator is a character in the story who is a crazy killer who claims that himself is smart and not crazy. Even though the narrator says that, we know that he is crazy by looking at the content and the things the narrator does. In this case, the narrator is not a reliable narrator, because what he says isn't always true. In these kinds of stories, we would have to find the clues in the story and question about what the narrators says. We can do this by paying attention into every detail in the story.