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The omniscient narrator It is the one who narrates knowing absolutely everything that happens: the actions, thoughts and motivations of the characters.
By having all this information, the omniscient narrator is not part of the story, that is, he is not a character.
- It can serve you: Narrator in first, second and third person
Narrator types
In addition to the omniscient narrator, there are three types of narrator, depending on the perspective he takes:
- Observer. It is a third person narrator that narrates only what can be observed. He does not know the thoughts or feelings of the characters beyond what they express.
- Protagonist. The protagonist of the events tells his own story. He is usually a first-person narrator because he talks about himself. However, he also uses the third person as he can narrate events that occur around him. The main narrator does not know what the other characters think or feel.
- Witness. The narrator is a secondary character, who does not carry out the main action. His knowledge belongs to someone involved with the events, but only as a secondary witness.
Characteristics of the omniscient narrator
- Use the third person.
- Exposes and comments on the actions of the characters and the events that occur around them.
- It tells the characters' thoughts, memories, intentions, and emotions.
- In some cases it anticipates what will happen in the future.
- Learn about the past of the places and characters.
Examples of omniscient storyteller
- “Phone calls”, Roberto Bolaños
One night when he has nothing to do, B manages, after two phone calls, to get in touch with X. Neither of them is young and this is evident in their voices crossing Spain from one end to the other. Friendship is reborn and after a few days they decide to meet again. Both parties drag divorces, new diseases, frustrations.
When B takes the train to X's city, he is still not in love. The first day they spend locked up in X's house, talking about their lives (in fact, it is X who speaks, B listens and from time to time asks); at night X invites him to share his bed. B deep down doesn't feel like sleeping with X, but accepts. In the morning, when he wakes up, B is in love again.
- “Tallow ball”Guy de Maupassant
After a few days, and the fear of the beginning dissipated, calm was restored. In many houses a Prussian officer shared a family table. Some, out of courtesy or sensitive feelings, pitied the French and declared that they were repulsed by being forced to take an active part in the war. They were thanked for these demonstrations of appreciation, also thinking that their protection would be necessary at some time. With adulation, perhaps they would avoid the upheaval and the expense of more accommodations.
What would it have led to hurt the powerful, on whom they depended? He was more reckless than patriotic. And recklessness is not a defect of the current bourgeois of Rouen, as it had been in those days of heroic defenses, which glorified and polished the city. It was reasoned - hiding behind the French chivalry - that it could not be judged a disgrace to take extreme care within the home, while in public each one showed little deference to the foreign soldier. In the street, as if they did not know each other; But at home it was very different, and they treated him in such a way that they kept their German for social gatherings at home, as a family, every night.
- “The banquet”Julio Ramón Ribeyro
That was a holiday, he went out with his wife to the balcony to contemplate his illuminated garden and close that memorable day with a bucolic dream. The landscape, however, seemed to have lost its sensitive properties, because wherever he put his eyes, Don Fernando saw himself, he saw himself in a jacket, in a jar, smoking cigars, with a background decoration where (as in certain tourist posters) confused the monuments of the four most important cities in Europe. Further away, at an angle to his chimera, he saw a railway returning from the forest with its wagons loaded with gold. And everywhere, moving and transparent as an allegory of sensuality, he saw a female figure with the legs of a coconut, the hat of a marquise, the eyes of a Tahitian and absolutely nothing of his wife.
On the day of the banquet, the first to arrive were the snitches. From five o'clock in the afternoon they had been posted on the corner, trying to keep an incognito that their hats betrayed, their excessively distracted manners and above all that terrible air of crime that investigators, secret agents and in general all those who often acquire. they carry out clandestine jobs.
- “The Capote”, Nicolás Gogol
The woman in labor was given a choice between three names: Mokkia, Sossia, and the martyr Josdasat. "No," said the sick woman to herself. What a few names! No!" To please her, they turned over the almanac sheet, which read three other names, Trifiliy, Dula, and Varajasiy.
"But this all seems like a real punishment!" exclaimed the mother. What names! I have never heard such a thing! If only it were Varadat or Varuj; but Trifiliy or Varajasiy!
They turned another sheet of the almanac and the names of Pavsikajiy and Vajticiy were found.
-Good; I see, "said the old mother," that this must be his destiny. Well then: then, you'd better be named after your father. Akakiy is called the father; that the son is also called Akakiy.
And so the name Akakiy Akakievich was formed. The child was baptized. During the sacramental act he wept and made such faces, as if he sensed that he was to be a titular counselor. And that's how things happened. We have cited these events in order to convince the reader that everything had to happen this way and that it would have been impossible to give it another name.
- “The swimmer”, John Cheever
It was one of those mid-summer Sundays when everyone repeats, "I drank too much last night." The parishioners whispered it when leaving the church, it could be heard from the lips of the parish priest as he took off his cassock in the sacristy, as well as on the golf courses and on the tennis courts, and also in the nature reserve where the chief The Audubon group was suffering from a terrible hangover.
"I drank too much," said Donald Westerhazy.
"We all drank too much," Lucinda Merrill was saying.
"It must have been the wine," Helen Westerhazy explained. I drank too much claret.
The setting for this last dialogue was the edge of the Westerhazy pool, whose water, coming from an artesian well with a high percentage of iron, had a soft green hue. The weather was splendid.
- See also: Literary text
Follow with:
| Encyclopedic storyteller | Main narrator |
| Omniscient narrator | Observing narrator |
| Witness narrator | Equiscient Narrator |
