Gav Thorpe has posted some thoughts on the use of different forms of narrative over on his (we)blog, Mechanical Hamster. As part of the ongoing debate, the question has arisen as to why storytelling styles change over time…
In large part, I think, it’s simply changing fashions. Tastes change over time and commercial publishing compounds that as publishers focus on what is currently popular. Writers aiming for publication follow suit and implement those styles in their own writing. Fashions continue to change, of course, and will change again. How quickly and how likely that change is to come about is of course down to how broadly followed the fashion is, which is one of the principal reasons I argue for the use of a greater variety of storytelling techniques.
In the particular case of the omniscient narrator, I suspect one reason for its decline in popularity is the separation of fact and fiction. The words ‘story’ and ‘history’ share a clearly observable common root and once upon a time the two words meant the same thing. Look at any work of literature from the middle ages or earlier and it’s clear to see that it contains elements of both what we would now call fact and fiction; history and story. Indeed, this was the case as recently as the 17th century; it was only the application of Enlightenment era thought to the arts and humanities that produced the idea of history as a discipline where factuality was paramount, and separate from fiction.
With that distinction made, the narrative forms used for fictional and factual writing diverged – journalistic forms of writing, for instance, developed around this time, with the subsequent emergence of the first daily newspapers. The omniscient narrator mode – with its seemingly boundless knowledge and a voice clearly external to the story – has many similarities to those styles used in factual writing, and may for that reason have become unpopular amongst writers (and readers) of fiction.
For the most part, the choice of the limited mode for narration of modern novels is a wise one. That’s not to say, though, that it suits all subjects or all kinds of stories, and to return to the original subject of this discussion, the historic, mythic and epic are stories to which, it seems to me, the third-person limited narrator is particularly ill-suited, and I really think its for the simple reason of the nature of those stories and the characters they contain.All reading, and therefore all writing, is ultimately an experience shared by the reader and the characters in the story; a connection between the two, you might say. Most beloved of the modern novel in achieving this is a sense of empathy, and it’s for that reason that the third-person limited perspective is so favoured. Empathy, though, is in itself a sign of modernity…
Empathy
In the modern day, we’re increasingly aware of the harm that can be caused by division and the misunderstanding, fear and mutual suspicion that brings. We’ve become both more aware and less accepting of divides – race, class, sex – and empathy is a way of crossing them. For the kinds of stories we tell in the modern age, that is essential – we tell stories of all sorts of people, from all kinds of backgrounds quite unlike our own. Perhaps the first author to do this, and the author who essentially began the era of the modern novel, is Charles Dickens. Prior to Dickens, empathy simply did not exist between the kinds of people who formed his readership and the kinds of people who featured as characters in his books; the class divide between them was simply too great, yet the empathy created by Dickens’ writing overcame it.
This tradition continues today in the modern novel, with empathy central to ensuring that anybody, from anywhere in the world, can read a story about somebody from anywhere else in the world, and still feel some kind of connection. This is admirable, and empathy is undoubtedly modern literature’s contribution to mankind as a whole, but that’s not to say that empathy is the be all and end of all of literature itself.
Empathy is one way of understanding others, but it’s not the only one. Empathy as we know it today hasn’t always existed. Empathy is closely related to morality, and like morality it changes over time, to the point where the morality of the past and the morality of the present may seem contradictory and unrecognisable to one another. The same is true of empathy. It simply isn’t always possible to empathise with the past, but that’s not to say we can’t feel a connection to it.
Speaking of the past, Aristotle said that there were three means of persuasion: logos (the logical part of the argument), ethos (the act of establishing one’s rightness to make the argument) and pathos (the emotional part of the argument). Now, when reading a novel, we’re not necessarily looking to be persuaded of anything in particular, but we are looking for a connection, and I think the methods of achieving that are very similar. Logos can be thought of as the realism we look for in the characters, the setting and the story, while ethos is already an expression commonly used when describing the success or otherwise of attempts to create a cohesive whole in the writing. Most significant to this particular discussion, though, is the third part – pathos.
Pathos
One of the word’s meanings is the general passion with which emotional aspects of a story or argument are delivered. Pathos, then, is quite different to empathy but is undoubtedly capable of producing a connection between reader and subject just as powerful and just as compelling. In circumstances where empathy is not possible, or inadequate, pathos instead provides the emotional connection. Delivering pathos is where the omniscient mode of narration excels.
Some of you will be thinking that my argument is flawed for the simple reason that empathy between very distant past and present is possible. Well, I simply don’t think it is. Understanding, yes; empathy, no. When it comes to the past, empathy actually hinders understanding. The search for empathy leads us to attribute to historical characters aspects of the human condition – such as modern morality – which they simply did not possess, concepts which were as alien to them then as the notion of a flat earth is to us today. This doesn’t create empathy with those characters – it simply transforms one character we can’t empathise with into another with which we can, and what’s the point of that? You might as well have started off with some other character altogether.
‘Because I really want to empathise with Alexander the Great?’ I can hear some of you saying. I really have to dispute this – you might want to understand him and form some connection, but it isn’t empathy. That’s just the word being used too broadly. When telling stories about characters as historic or as legendary as Achilles or King Arthur, I honestly don’t believe that empathy is what the readers are looking for (though they may mistakenly express it as such). It’s not even just a question of the great divide of time – there are just some people, and hence some characters, for whom we have no empathy, who are by their very nature so different from us that we simply cannot form it, but there’s still a value to be had in gaining some understanding of, or connection, to them. There are other ways than empathy to achieve that, and pathos is one of them.
There is some similarity here to a point I make in my article on Tolkien, about the use of fate. Fate is another device seldom used in storytelling nowadays, which is nonetheless able to create a connection between reader and subject. Fate has been largely replaced by characterisation, though it isn’t simply an antecedent of it, it’s an alternative (much as pathos is to empathy). Fate is the depiction of an outcome inevitable or unavoidable to a particular individual, and how that individual is so affected by it, whereas characterisation is the depiction of that individual’s particular nature. The two can coexist (as can empathy and pathos) but which of the two holds the upper hand really defines the nature of the story. Fate is an older, and perhaps less subtle, concept than those embodied by the modern art of characterisation, but fate still has a relevance. Why? Simply because we all on occasion experience the feeling that events are predestined for us. Sod’s law, bloody typical; fate. Witnessing a character also prey to such inescapable fate creates a connection for us, no matter that we may know little of their nature, or that the ‘characterisation’ may be lacking.
The broader point here is this: all stories are designed to create a connection between the writer, the reader and the characters. Inherent in the nature of some stories are needs that make certain forms of storytelling inadequate – the use of the third-person limited narrative to depict Alexander the Great, for instance.
This doesn’t make any one mode superior to the others, it’s just a reminder that narrative mode, as with all questions of style, should be chosen on the basis of what kind of characters and what kind of story a writer wishes to create; not on the basis of fashion or habit. Doing otherwise will simply lead to characters to whom the reader feels no connection, or, as is perhaps more common, characters who are not at all who they are supposed to be.
And what does it matter that they’ve changed? Well, changes in names and dates and deeds don’t matter a thing, but a change in nature does. When the nature of such stories and such characters is altered, the very reason for retelling them in the first place is lost. In changing – in modernising – something as minor as the narrative mode, we need to be careful we don’t change something fundamental, too.
Matt
