For the last few posts I’ve been discussing the importance of the point of view that a story uses and how narrarive perspectives can impact the story. We’re now onto the last perspective that can be used in story telling, which is first person.
What is a First Person Narrative?
First person perspective is when the story is written with the narrator as the protagonist who has experienced or is experiencing the events of the narrative. It is an intimate perspective, designed to elicit the experience of the reader being told a first person account of a story, with access to the narrator’s thoughts and feelings throughout.
One mistake at the end of my life couldn’t erase all the times I had stood unmoved at the edge of the abyss and made snide remarks at its expense. They could kill me, but they couldn’t have me. I was my own.
Ghost Story – Jim Butcher
To imagine a book as a real life scenario, in first person narratives you are sitting down next to another person and that person is sharing a piece of their life story, including both the events and their own thoughts and feelings at the time.
Why use a first person perspective
The intimacy of connection
The most obvious advantage of this perspective over others is how closely connected you are with the narrator. This is a far more intimate perspective than even third person limited (which I discuss here) because the narrator has invited you in, they’re actively telling you their story and sharing their experiences. As a reader, you’re not just observing what happens: you’re being asked to share in it.
From a psychological perspective, humans are profoundly social species. Our brains are wired to connect to others and experiencing that connection has been shown to activate brain areas associated with physical safety and warmth.
A first person narrative is an extreme in human connection. A person who is willing to share every little detail of their experience with you, right down to their personal thoughts and feelings. As a social animal, we’re likely to find this highly rewarding – provided we see something in the story that we’re interested in connecting with.
Detailed Character Development
First person narratives allow for a detailed exploration of the narrator’s character, in a way that no other perspective does.
There are several examples where the first person perspective exposes us to detailed elements of the narrator’s thinking style and personality that we wouldn’t really have access to otherwise.
One would be The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which is narrated by an autistic teenager and gives unique insights into his perspective of the world around him.
I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
The premise of the book stems in part from his own unique viewpoint – when he finds a dead dog, he sees it as a murder and sets out to investigate and find the killer. Even the way in which the narrative is presented offers insight into the character that the reader might not otherwise have access to – such as the way that he describes his thoughts and experiences using diagrams.
Of course, the flip side of such a personal account is that it’s inherently biased and potentially unreliable. As far as our social brains are concerned, that’s part of the fun. We love puzzles and gain satisfaction from solving them. Solving social puzzles has the additional benefit of adding to our understanding of other people – so if we distrust an unreliable narrator, we feel rewarded to be proven right; or if they catch us out, we get the buzz from the shock of the surprise.
One well-known example of an unreliable narrator is Pi Patel from The Life of Pi, who recounts his fantastical story of surviving stranded at sea with a tiger named Richard Parker and then presents an alternative, more realistic but also more brutal, version of events and we as readers need to decide which we would prefer to be true.
I was giving up. I would have given up – if a voice hadn’t made itself heard in my heart. The voice said “I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine.
The Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Only in a first person narrative could a story be called into question to such a degree. Most other perspectives lead to an assumption that the story is being observed in some way by the reader, albeit with a potentially biased filter imposed by the narrator. Whereas in first person, we’re living in someone’s mind – and we all know how inaccurate our own perceptions can sometimes be!
Societal Issues at an Individual Level
Another powerful use of a first person narrative is to use the individual narrator as a way to speak to a wider societal issue, either as a form of analysis or critique.
A wonderful example of this is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. This book explores the lives of Kathy and her friends, who are clones created to be organ donors. In her world, they are seen as less than human. Kathy’s role is to care for and reduce the ‘agitation’ of fellow donors. She is never in a position where she can fight against her place in society but her own first person narrative does that for her – it humanises her and her friends, connecting the reader with them in a way that those in her world refuse to.
Or another example would be Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. An unnamed narrator, who feels disenfranchised from society and its definitions of manhood, turns to Tyler Durden. Tyler Durden starts a fight club and then a cult-like organisation, which engages in increasingly dangerous anti-consumerist attacks. At first, the narrator seems to be just another follower of Durden, until it emerges that he has dissociative identity disorder and he and Durden are the same person.
The first person perspective gives the reader a unique insight into the mind of the narrator, seeing the world as he convinces himself it is, rather than how it really is. We follow along with him, watching Durden grow increasingly out of control. Even once the narrator knows the truth, events have already moved beyond him, leaving him just as helpless in the face of Durden’s actions as he was in the face of the society that he struggled to fit in to.
What first person perspectives can’t do
By definition, this perspective is the story of one person. Everything that the reader sees has to have been seen by them. While events could be shared with them by other characters, if a lot of action happens away from the narrator then this can leave the reader feeling disconnected from the story.
This means that the narrative in a first person story is often narrower in focus than other perspectives. In third person limited, the camera might pick up on details that the protagonist misses. In third person omniscient the narrator can see anything that they need to for the sake of the story. Even second person can take on a more omniscient form when required.
One solution to this is to include multiple first person perspectives, like in Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, which relies heavily on both narrators being unreliable and obscuring the reality of the story. This can work well as a way to tell an immersive story from multiple angles, building a wider picture than with a single point of view. However, there is a risk of confusion for the reader in terms of who is speaking and when, which means that in many cases third person is often easier – allowing the narrative to follow the protagonists closely without any confusion around which character is the current focus.
More generally, some people can find a first person perspective to be too immersive and can be put off by the story as a result. They may not connect with the narrator or they may feel frustrated that they aren’t seeing aspects of the other characters’ stories. Therefore it has to be clear why those other aspects are less important to the themes of the story than the mind of the narrator itself, or people may struggle to join the narrator on their journey.
About The Author
Caroline Ashley is a clinical psychologist who works for the NHS in Scotland. She enjoys all forms of fantasy and is fascinated with the ways in which the fantastical can speak to our everyday lives. If Caroline had any spare time around work, writing and raising her two young children, she would spend it playing board games.
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Caroline Ashley 