What is narrator? Narrator is the voice the author creates to tell the story. The possible ways of telling a story are many, and more than one way can beworked into a single story.
Conventionally, the various narrators thatstorytellers draw upon can be grouped into four broad groups: the third-personnarrator, the first-person narrator, the omniscient narrator and the witnessnarrator. After reading William Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily” ,EdoraWelty’s “A Worn Path”, Richard Wright’s “The Man Who Was Almost AMan” and Katherine Anne Porter’s “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”,I want to discuss what type of the narrative voice the four writers create intheir own stories. A witness narrator is who tells only what they see or hearthrough their perspectives. For example, in William Faulkner’s “A Rose forEmily” which is about an insane woman who kills her man and sleeps with thedead man for ten years, I can find that there is an example of witness narrator. The author, William Faulkner, uses the Jefferson town people as witness tocreate the town’s view about Emily. After the town noticed there was a stinkysmell from Miss Grierson house , they asked Judge Stevens to “send her wordto stop it”( Faulkner,337).
The town people discussed about the stinkysmell from Emily ‘s house, they were the observers. A first-person narrator iswhen the narrator speaks using “I” or “We” pronouns. We cansee such first-person narrator in both “A Rose For Emily” and “The Man Who Was Almost A Man”. Faulkner uses the town people as observersin “A Rose For Emily” but his we, though plural and representative ifthe town’s view of Emily, is definitely a first-person narrator. Just as in thearticle where it says “We did not say she was crazy then. We believed shehad to do that.
We remembered all the young men her father driven away, and weknew. . . “(338).
