Narration: Working in Third Person, Ann Beattie, "Janus"

We have talked about the importance of narrative voice in writing, and how it does so much more than just tells the story. It creates mood. It defines character. It is the primary focus of interaction between reader and story. In the examples we’ve looked at up to this point, however, the narratives have been from first person narrators. It’s easy to see how a first-person narrator can do these things, but what about a third-person narrator?

Unlike first-person narrators, third-person narrators are not directly a part of the story. The narrator tells the story from a vantage point outside of the action. Yet the narrator is no less a character than someone who is narrating in first person and is a participant in the action. As with the figures in the story itself, you get a sense of the narrator in a third-person story. They become a character in their own right, and as the one who tells the story, he or she is the character one encounters the most. They can be distant and mysterious, or very much involved and present in the novel, but the narrator is a player in the action. He or she has an impact on the story even though they are not in the story as an active participant.

The story I want to look at on this blog is, again, one of my favorites. It is “Janus,” by Ann Beattie. 

Anne Beattie

I’m not just looking it because I like the narrative voice. In this tale, the narrative voice is important. In fact, the narrator is more important, I think, than the character she talks about.

“Janus” is about a realtor—a woman who sells houses and, as all of us know, shows houses to potential buyers. The title, interestingly, comes from this. We know Janus as the Roman god of the New Year. He has two faces, one looking forward and one looking back. But in Roman mythology, Janus was also the god of doorways and passages. His double-faced image was often seen on doors. We leave one room and go into another. A realtor, of course, traffics in rooms and is always showing people in and out of them.

The narrator of this story tells it in a calm, even, yet declaratory voice. She (since Ann Beattie wrote the story we’ll call the narrator “she,” though it could be a male voice) is omniscient, knows everything about Andrea, the realtor, and does a quiet, objective, but thorough job of presenting her. Her voice is sympathetic but analytic. She talks about her life, the affair she had, and the bowl with which she is obsessed:  The wonderful thing about the bowl, Andrea thought, was that it was both subtle and noticeable—a paradox of a bowl. Its glaze was the color of cream and seemed to glow no matter what light it was placed in. There were a few bits of color in it—tiny geometric flashes—and some of these were tinged with flecks of silver. They were as mysterious as cells seen under a microscope; it was difficult not to study them. The story centers around her fixation on the bowl.

You eventually find out her lover, with whom she has broken off the relationship, bought it for her at an antique shop. Andrea is drifting through a marriage that is stable but not exactly happy and a career that is profitable but not exactly fulfilling. She seems to quietly move through an empty world—empty as the rooms she enters with potential home buyers. Like the god Janus, she is looking back and forward: from room to room, and from her dull relationship with her husband, to the potentially fulfilling relationship with a lover, a relationship she has left behind.

The narrator gives the story a quiet tone. It reflects the quiet of empty houses, empty rooms, and an empty life. The narrator analyzes fairly and dispassionately. Her tone reflects the tone of Andrea’s existence. The story is subdued. It has a ring of sadness. The narrator shapes the reader’s mood.

Not a lot happens in the story. Beattie skillfully uses narrative voice, the narrator’s quiet analysis of Andrea and her obsession, to keep the reader’s attention. The narrator becomes an interesting character, even though she only speaks. She is perhaps as interesting as the main character of the story.

Narration contributes a lot. We’ve come a long way from when narration was considered merely a vehicle by which the story is conveyed. It is a living, vital part of the book. The narrator is a character and a presence. Be sure, when you write, to consider the place of the narrator and of narration. As Saint James says in the Bible, If ye do these things, ye shall do well.

For a gift idea, give one of my books! The Gallery is a scary story about an artist and her encounter with the undead; Strange Brew is about music, witchcraft, love, and the pre-civil rights South (both of these are adult stories, not suitable for small kids). The Prophetess, a New Testament horror story, would be suitable for adults and young adults.   The Sorceress of the Northern Seas is a full-length fantasy novel, more adult, but would be acceptable to a YA audience as well. Gifts for everyone.

Read my interview with Micro-Shock.

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Happy Holidays to all!