Third Person Narrator Examples
Miscellanea / / July 04, 2021
Third Person Narrator
The storyteller It is the character, voice or entity that relates the events that the characters of a story go through. The narrator may or may not be a character in the story and it is through his story and the angle from the one who looks at the facts that the reader interprets and perceives the events that make up the story.
Depending on the voice he uses and the degree of involvement with the story, there are three types of narrators: The narrator in first person; the second person narrator Y the third person narrator.
The third-person narrator is one who recounts the events from the outside, and may or may not be part of the story. For example: He came to her house, kicked off his shoes, and opened a bottle of wine. Behind the door, for the first time, he had managed to leave on the other side of the door those problems that had been plaguing him for two weeks.
Types of third person narrator
- Informant witness. He narrates the story by transcribing the events, as if it were a chronicle or document.
- Impersonal witness. He only narrates, generally in the present tense, what he witnessed.
- Eyewitness. He tells the events that he witnessed, more or less closely, in the past. This narrator makes little allusion to himself.
Examples of third person narrator
- Omniscient narrator
She woke up suddenly, opened her eyes and found she was sitting on her bed. It was hard for him to breathe. Once again, that accident crept into her dreams. She got up, poured water into the first glass she found on the counter, and sat down on a chair. He haunted her that memory, that death that had left her with a void that she knew she could never fill. But what exasperated her most was the idea of not being able to get over it. That her life was suspended, tied to that moment. That each day, as the last months of her life had been, are no more than a race whose goal was getting further and further away.
- Reporter witness narrator
For reasons I will not reveal here, I had the opportunity - the bad experience - to set foot in one of those concentration camps that lie in our city, but that nobody talks about, as if existed. One of his guards, with trembling hands, placed a piece of paper in the palm of my hand in which he gives chilling details of what it is to live there. Next, I will write verbatim just a fragment of what that man told me. Some passages are illegible, so I chose the following: “The light is nothing more than a memory, a longing. The prisoners have been staying for days, months, maybe years - who knows - in damp and dark dungeons in which they do not even enter lying down. Once a day, a guard, from whose mouth a word can never come out, leaves them a can, with a minimum portion of something that pretends to be a stew, with a bitter taste and doubtful origin. The bathroom is not an option and the dose of water they receive is barely enough not to die of thirst ”.
- Impersonal witness narrator
Retirement does not suit Don Julio at all. All his life he had fantasized about that moment and now every minute is an ordeal. His library became her world. His life is reduced to those four walls full of shelves where, for years, he was accumulating books with the illusion of reading them when he finally begins what he thought would be the best stage of his lifetime. But there they are, almost intact. Every time he takes one, which he chooses with his index finger from among all the spines, and in the hope that that yes be the one, in just a few minutes he finds any excuse to leave him aside and start doing another thing.
The grandfather clock that she stands next to the leather chair in which she tries to read from her became her worst enemy; she reminds him that the hours do not pass, that the days do not end and that each minute is eternal.
- Eyewitness narrator
That the doorbell rang from her startled her, she looked at the clock and made a face. "Could it be that she forgot the keys," she wondered aloud, alluding to her husband, whom she had not seen since breakfast, when each one went, separately, to their respective work.
He put down the teacup, stood up, and walked to the door wiping his hands on the red and white checkered cloth. He leaned through the peephole and took several seconds to open the door.
On the other side, a man dressed as a policeman asked her a question, to which she answered with a "yes", while her face transformed. Seconds later, as if his legs weren't responding, he fell to the ground and covered his face with the checkered cloth. The next thing he heard was a heartbreaking cry.
Follow with:
Encyclopedic storyteller | Main narrator |
Omniscient narrator | Observing narrator |
Witness narrator | Equiscient Narrator |