Tatum Cornille

Tatum Cornille

Caralise Poole-Frazer

Eric Le

Dylan Devlieger

Narration

Insight

●Narration is different from simply just the narrator, it is how the story is told, and the elements that are used in doing so. The narrator simply tells the story.

●Narration is unreliable when we judge the flaws or misperceptions of the narrator and in turn causes us to question the narrator’s accounts or reliability. Unreliable narration can be used for irony within stories, as it may cause the reader to be misled by the voice of the narrator to misperceive events that in actuality aren’t what the reader had originally anticipated.

●Central consciousness is filtering things, people, and events through an individual character’s perceptions and responses. It allows the audience to directly perceive the feelings and emotions of the protagonist’s psyche. This can be used to distort or enhance the perception of the reader, as the reader focuses on the story in the perspective of the main characters.

●The different types of narration are 1st person, 2nd person, third person omniscient, and third person limited. Although there are different ways in which the events of the story are told, they can all be told by the same person.

●Direct narration is when the narrator speaks directly to the reader. Like limited narration, this can cause readers to have bias’ towards one or another character, as description and plot is given with the narrator’s point of view, which can be biased.

●Limited narration is when you only know the perspective of one character or a few characters. You are “limited” because you know the plot based off of a few or one character. This can cause the reader to have a bias or to judge characters.

Paragraph: Siddhartha

Siddhartha is told from a third person omniscient viewpoint, as it elaborates on the perceptions and streams of consciousness of many characters within the novel. The story isn’t explicitly told from Siddhartha’s viewpoint, as we are given insight to what many other characters think and perceive within the story. Because third person other readers are not immediately omniscient usually leads to a more distant and objective basis because of the way it is narrated, this allows us to evaluate the many different perspectives and abstractions within the story. The narrator of the story is unnamed, someone who simply follows the journey of Siddhartha. As the story can be perceived as an allegory, or composed of many different allegories, Siddhartha represents greater moral and spiritual struggles as he goes along his journey. Because the point of view is dispersed among the characters, we are given insight to others. Hesse describes Govinda, “Govinda was delighted, and joyfully he cried, “Fine, then we have reached our goal and our journey is over” (Hesse 25)! Because we are able to see within the thoughts and emotions of Govinda, we can clearly see and distinguish his qualities from Siddhartha, developing Govinda into a foil for Siddhartha’s character. Here he evidently says how his journey is coming to a close whereas in the perspective of Siddhartha, Hesse says, “But Siddhartha said they would have to go on” (Hesse 26). Due to the narration techniques and type that Hesse incorporates, the third person omniscient viewpoint gives the audience a clearer understanding of what entailed the contrasting mentalities of the characters, that ultimately foreshadowed their departure into their own respective paths. Hesse’s narrative techniques can also be seen with Siddhartha’s encounter with Kamala. Siddhartha thinks to himself, focused on Kamala, “But he always went back to beautiful Kamala, learned the art of love, practised the cult of pleasure, in which, more than anywhere else, giving and taking become one… She understood him better than Govinda understood him, she was more similar to Siddhartha” (Hesse 64). Siddhartha’s stream of consciousness reflects his deeper meaning with being around Kamala, as a way not to merely “play around” but as a means of being taught the complexities and intricacies of love. Siddhartha’s internal comparison of Govinda to Kamala reinforces the idea that Govinda is in fact Siddhartha’s foil, while the narration allows the audience to see the connection between Siddhartha and Kamala on levels that would be understood differently had the narration not described the exchange between Siddhartha and Kamala as so. Hesse also uses third person omniscient narration to elaborate characters’ perspectives on other characters. After his exchange with Siddhartha, Hesse describes Govinda, “With doubt in his eyes Govinda gazed and gazed at the friend of his youth. Then he bade him farewell as one does with noblemen, and he went his way” (Hesse 83). Because we are given insight to what Govinda directly thinks of Siddhartha and his seemingly materialistic lifestyle, this continues to reinforce not only the internal mindsets of the characters, but builds the characters and their role in the story as well. The audience is given insight to Govinda’s role in the novel as a follower, and this reestablishes his purpose as a foil to Siddhartha’s own path, as he allegorically resembles the commonly held and “mainstream” ways to believe in life, as oppose to Siddhartha;s perspective on taking his own path.