Narrator types (with examples)

The storyteller is the voice that describes and relates, from its point of view, the events that are told in a narrative text.

There are different types of narrators, but most of them are fictional entities and are in charge of organizing how the information in a story appears in relation to:

The narrator can be external to the events he tells, a character who participates in the story he tells or, in certain cases, as in a autobiography, may match the author.

Generally, in novels, the stories, the biographies, the Chronicles waves poetry there is only one narrator. However, in certain cases, a story can be told by different characters.

Types of narrators

According to the grammatical person

There are different types of narrators depending on which grammar person is used the most. In some texts, these narrators can be combined.

According to your knowledge

The narrators are also classified according to the knowledge or the level of closeness they have about the events, the themes or the characters and according to how they intervene in the plot.

Narrator Examples

1. First person narrator - Autobiographyby Agatha Christie

One of the best things in life is a happy childhood. Mine was. I had a house and a garden that I liked very much, a wise and patient nurse, and by parents two people who loved each other dearly and whose marriage and parenthood were a success.

Looking back, I see that ours was a happy home, thanks in large part to my father who was a very accommodating man. In our days, not much importance is given to this quality. It is often asked if a man is intelligent and industrious, if he contributes to the common good, if he has influence.

1. Second person narrator - Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubasby Joaquim Machado de Assis

Hold on to this expression, reader; save it, examine it, and if you do not understand it, you can conclude that you ignore one of the most subtle sensations of that world and of that time. *

* In many parts of this book, the second person is used to speak to the reader, but most of the novel is narrated in the first person.

1. Third person narrator - Iliadby Homer

The other gods and men, owners of war chariots,
They slept through the night, but the pleasant dream did not dominate Zeus,
who doubted in his mind how to honor Achilles
and annihilate many on the ships of the Achaeans.
And here is the plan that was revealed to him the best in his mind:
send Agamemnon on Atrid to the pernicious Dreaming.

1. Main narrator - David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens

If I am the hero of my own life or if someone else will replace me, these pages will say so. To start my story from the beginning, I will say that I was born (as I am told and I believe it) on a Friday at twelve o'clock at night. And, curious thing, the clock began to chime and I began to scream simultaneously.

Considering the day and time of birth, the nurse and some midwives in the neighborhood (who had a vital interest in me many months before I we could know each other personally) declared: first, that he was predestined to be miserable in this life, and second, that he would enjoy the privilege of seeing ghosts and spirits.

1. Omniscient Narrator - "The Circular Ruins", by Jorge Luis Borges

The stranger stretched out beneath the pedestal. He was awakened by the sun high. He found without astonishment that the wounds had healed; he closed his pale eyes and slept, not because of the weakness of the flesh but because of the determination of the will. He knew that this temple was the place that his invincible purpose required; he knew that the incessant trees had not succeeded in strangling, downstream, the ruins of another auspicious temple, also of gods burned and dead; he knew that his immediate obligation was the dream. Around midnight he was awakened by the inconsolable cry of a bird.

1. Impersonal witness narrator - Beehiveby Camilo José Cela

The woman goes down the sidewalk, on her way to the Plaza de Alonso Martínez. In a window of the Café on the corner of the boulevard, two men are talking. They are two young men, one in his twenties and the other in his thirties; the oldest looks like a jury in a literary contest; the youngest has the air of being a novelist.

1. Eyewitness narrator - Heart of Darknessby Joseph Conrad

He was silent. The flames slid down the river, small green flames, red flames, white flames, which chased each other and reached each other, joining, then crossing and separating very slowly, or very quickly. The traffic of the great city continued in an increasingly dense night, over a river that never slept. We watched each other, waiting, patiently. There was nothing to do as long as the tide did not turn, but only after a long silence, as Marlow said, in your hesitant voice, “I suppose, comrades, you will remember that I once tried luck as a freshwater sailor ”, we realized that we were condemned to hear, before the current began to descend, another of his ambiguous and inconclusive experiences stories.

1. Reporter witness narrator - The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quijote of La Manchaby Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

When I heard "Dulcinea del Toboso" say, I was astonished and suspended, because later it was represented to me that those folders contained the story of Don Quixote. With this imagination, I hastened him to read the principle, and doing so, suddenly turning the Arabic into Castilian, said it said: History of Don Quixote de la Mancha, written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, historian Arabic. Much discretion was necessary to hide the joy I received when the title of the book reached my ears; and, skipping the silk shop, I bought the boy all the papers and folders through royal media; that if he had discretion and knew what I wanted them, he could well promise himself and take more than six reales of the purchase. Then I parted with the Moor through the cloister of the main church, and begged him to return those folders, all the that they dealt with Don Quixote, in the Spanish language, without taking away or adding anything to them, offering him whatever payment he wanted. He was content with two arrobas of raisins and two bushels of wheat, and promised to translate them well and faithfully and very briefly; But I, to make the business easier and not to let such a good find out of hand, brought him to my house, where in little more than a month and a half he translated the whole thing, in the same way that he refers here.

1. Observer narrator - “The slaughterhouse”, by Esteban Echeverría

So there was a very copious rain at that time. The roads were flooded; the swamps were swam and the streets leading into and out of the city were overflowing with watery mud. A tremendous avenue suddenly rushed down the Riachuelo de Barracas, and its murky waters extended majestically to the foot of the upper ravines. The Silver growing raging pushed those waters that were looking for their channel and made them run swollen by over fields, embankments, groves, hamlets, and spread like an immense lake through all the lowlands. The city circled from the North to the East by a belt of water and mud, and to the South by a whitish sea wall on whose surface some boats and blackened chimneys and treetops, cast astonished glances at the horizon from their towers and ravines as if begging for mercy from the Soaring. It seemed the threat of a new flood.

1. Equiscient narrator - “Continuity of the parks”, by Julio Cortázar

He had started reading the novel a few days before. He abandoned it for urgent business, he reopened it when he was returning by train to the farm; he slowly became interested in the plot, in the drawing of the characters. That afternoon, after writing a letter to his manager and discussing a partnership issue with the butler, he returned to the book in the quiet of the study that looked out over the park of oaks. Lying in his favorite chair, with his back to the door that would have bothered him as an irritating possibility of intrusions, he let his left hand stroke over and over the green velvet and read the last few chapters. His memory effortlessly retained the names and images of the protagonists; the romantic illusion won him over almost immediately.

1. Multiple narrator - While I agonizeby William Faulkner

Darl (first chapter)

Jewel and I left the field following the trail single file. Although I am about five meters ahead, anyone who is watching us from the shed cotton will see Jewel's frayed and torn straw hat sticking out one head above mine.

Cora (second chapter)

So yesterday I took the eggs I had set aside and made the cakes. They came out very well for me. We are very dependent on chickens.

Dewey Dell (seventh chapter)

We were picking the cotton following the row, and the forest was closer and closer, as was the secret shadow, and we keep picking up and walking towards the secret shadow with my coat and Lafe with the yours.

1. Encyclopedic storyteller - Borges' swayby Sergio Díaz-Luna

It can serve you: