http://deborahkalin.com/damselfly/2005/08/outsiders/ Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:19:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 http://deborahkalin.com/damselfly/2005/08/outsiders/comment-page-1/#comment-5 Greg Sat, 13 Aug 2005 05:19:13 +0000 http://deborahmcdonnell.com/sandbox/2005/08/13/outsiders/#comment-5 Reading this I suddenly realized an odd thought, specifically thinking of some of the Dickens books where he used first person narration (David Copperfield and Great Expectations springing to immmediate mind). They oddly fit, because I think you could make an argument that the narrator and the protagonist are not the same. In Great Expectations, say, it is the older, wiser, humbler Pip who is the narrator, while the protagonist is, well, not him, really. It's the younger him, arrogant and cocky and ungrateful. And so you get the outsider commentary, really, even though it's superficially the "same" person. He does pretty much the same thing in David Copperfield, though for different effects. And that, of course, makes me eyeball all first person narration and wonder how much you can -- indeed, maybe have to -- separate the character as protag and the character as POV. Reading this I suddenly realized an odd thought, specifically thinking of some of the Dickens books where he used first person narration (David Copperfield and Great Expectations springing to immmediate mind). They oddly fit, because I think you could make an argument that the narrator and the protagonist are not the same. In Great Expectations, say, it is the older, wiser, humbler Pip who is the narrator, while the protagonist is, well, not him, really. It's the younger him, arrogant and cocky and ungrateful. And so you get the outsider commentary, really, even though it's superficially the "same" person. He does pretty much the same thing in David Copperfield, though for different effects. And that, of course, makes me eyeball all first person narration and wonder how much you can — indeed, maybe have to — separate the character as protag and the character as POV.

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