The deficient narrator is a witness who relates objectively only what he perceives through his senses, without expressing opinions about what he is witnessing.
His narration is similar to the image provided by a video camera, since it shows the reader a certain scene, without including subjectivities. Hence, he is also known as an objective narrator.
The poor narrator knows fewer aspects of the plot, compared to the experiences of the protagonist, which attributes to him a restricted handling of information.
Given the lack of knowledge of the details, the interpretations of the poor narrator are often terse. This is precisely what gives him the character of "deficient", compared to other storytellers.
Poor Narrator Characteristics
The poor narrator is a deliberate creation of the author, with the intention of providing different points of view within the same story.
This type of narrator generally acts as the witness to a scene, and their descriptions exert some influence on the construction of the characters.
Here are the main characteristics of the poor storyteller:
- He is not an omniscient narrator at all. On the contrary, the deficient narrator is impersonal, his notions refer only to what he can see and hear.
- The poor narrator usually speaks in the first person. The analog of this type of third-person narrator is known as a camera narrator.
- The poor narrator is limited to showing the events he witnessed. That is to say, it does not explain the reasons for the events, nor does it elucidate hypotheses that solve the unknowns of the story.
- Since he is a witness to the events reported, the deficient narrator is very common in journalistic narration.
Events articles, for example, only describe what happened, without including interpretations or conjectures about the motive of the events. They only declare what is in view of the witnesses.
- This type of resource is also very useful in detective novels. The poor narrator is used to generate suspense in the reader, and encourages the intentional ignorance of some of the details of the story.
- Provides information on the actions of the characters, their gestures and their responses to certain stimuli.
However, the deficient narrator is only a reflection of this, so ultimately the reader will be the one who generates the value judgments associated with the story.
- Given the nature of this voice, the deficient narrator is unaware of the thoughts, emotions and feelings of the main characters. This information is not available to witnesses.
- This type of narrator acts as an inefficient or clueless informant, due to the limitations of the information available to him.
- As it is not a main character, it is feasible to determine that this type of narrator knows less about the story than the protagonist. His participation is not neuralgic within the plot.
References
- Arias, I. (2012). The camera narrator and the poor narrator. Recovered from: ladydragona.com
- Objective narrator (nd). Recovered from: diclib.com
- Types of narrator (2010). Recovered from: portaleducativo.net
- Types of narrators and narrative levels (2009). Recovered from: ldelmiraenguayliteratura.blogspot.com
- Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (2017). Storyteller. Recovered from: es.wikipedia.org