# 1st Person POV and Death: Why Not?



## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

I posted this on another thread a few days ago and realized it was off topic for that thread:

"Just a question . . . I've seen this remark in various forms on several threads now, and I don't quite understand. Why, when a book is written in 1st person, do people assume that the narrator can't die? I mean, I get that you need a narrator to tell the story, but can't that person die at the end? Or even narrate after he or she is dead? Susie Salmon dies in _The Lovely Bones_ and that's all 1st person."

What are your thoughts about this? Do you know of any other books besides _The Lovely Bones_ in which a 1st person narrator dies? If so, I'd be interested to hear about them. Susan Howatch's books such as _Cashelmara_ have multiple 1st person narrators, and sometimes those characters die, but I can't think of any others at the moment.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

For some people it's the thought that main characters shouldn't die, the concept that if someone is telling the story "of course" they will live through it.

For others it's the feeling that there is no life after death, so can so a dead person narrate.

From a book perspective, I can't think of any first person narrator who is dead, but one of my favorite musicals uses it.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Some people who do not like first-person stories give as one of their reasons that the first person voice seems to remove any uncertainty about the ultimate fate of the narrator. Personally, that has never bothered me and I tend to like 1st person, but I could see a sort of corollary to that: a sense of the author "tricking" me if s/he kills off the narrator. Again, I do not think it would bother me -- assuming it is well done, of course. It might get a little gimmicky, though -- the sort of thing where maybe the last chapter would be written by the person who "discovered" the narrator's manuscript or some other kludge. Again, this might work for me in the right author's hands, but it could also risk having the story end on a less than successful note if not done nearly perfectly.

So to make a long story short: it depends. 

And my proof that a narrator _can_ die and still have it "work" is simply the fact that I've never forgotten that line from _The Spoon River Anthology_ even though it's been decades since I read it in high school: "When I felt the bullet enter my heart, I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail."


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## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

Some of the best use of a first person narrative and death I've run across involved writing the book as a journal without a final chapter stating whether the protagonist specifically succeeded or not (think _A Handmaid's Tale_) .... But I have read examples where one knows for certain the protagonist died in the end that were well done.

I've also read some examples that just didn't work. So maybe it's a rule for the amateurs to follow and for the more experienced writers to break with care...


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

Hi,

Depends on the tense surely? A 1st person past-tense narrator would be tricky (although not impossible) to kill off at the end, as they are essentially narrating events _after they've happened_. Whereas, a 1st person present tense, stream of thought, style would be okay as they are narrating things _as they happen_ and so there's no logical reason they have live through it... (although it's still hard to do well).

cheers
James


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

Hemingway's Across the River and Into the Trees is 1st person dies. I pretty sure 1st person, been years since I read it. Need to look at it again. It is a very good book.


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## ◄ Jess ► (Apr 21, 2010)

I think _Deadline_ is another example of a 1st person POV where the main character dies. Excellent book, btw. It definitely can (and has) been done!


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## sal (Aug 4, 2009)

A somewhat "tricky" example of that can be found in a number of science fictional / fantasy works.
_Fallen_ would be a good example (but it's a movie, and I don't think it was officially based on a novel).

I think they stole the basic idea from a sci-fi book, but I don't remember which one. Possibly _The Mind Parasites_ by Colin Wilson.

Sal


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

Remember "Sunset Boulevard?" The narrator admits to being dead, floating in the pool face down, in the opening scene!

There's also a situation like Agatha Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyed." I guess it scandalized a lot of people at the time it was published in the 1920s that the narrator turns out


Spoiler



to be the murderer, although he doesn't mention that he did the evil deed until confronted by Hercule Poirot at the end of the novel.


 I guess the assumption on the part of the reader is that A) a dead person can't speak/narrate because dead people don't talk and B) the narrator can't be lying.


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## Randy Kadish (Feb 24, 2010)

I don't like it. Just doesn't seem possible. If I have to go the route where my POV character dies, I'd have the death happen after the character finishes his/her story, then have an epiloque added by someone else, like in the _Diary of Ann Frank_, if I remember correctly.

Randy


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

DYB said:


> Remember "Sunset Boulevard?" The narrator admits to being dead, floating in the pool face down, in the opening scene!


That's the musical I was referring to!


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

scarlet said:


> That's the musical I was referring to!


It was a (great) movie first!



Spoiler



The narrator of Charlie Huston's Hank Thompson trilogy dies at the end.


 I put that in spoiler because I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't read it.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

DYB said:


> It was a (great) movie first!


Indeed it was.


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

DYB, thank you--as I was reading the thread, I kept trying to think of the Agatha Christie book I'd read in which she had done something similar to what I mention in the OP. I had a serious case of on the-tip-of-my-tongue syndrome and could not, for the life of me, remember the title. So you saved me some serious frustration.

I've never seen _Sunset Boulevard _ and now realize that I need to. Also, thanks for all the suggestions--_The Spoon River Anthology_ quote gave me a evil chuckle.

Interesting point about the difference between present tense and past tense--I hadn't thought of that. I have an aversion to present tense the same way some people have an aversion to 1st person POV. I'll read a book written in present tense, but I generally stop reading if the present tense distracts me from the story. Actually, I tend to quit reading if any stylistic device distracts me from the story. I figure if I'm paying more attention to the writing itself than I am to the story, then it's not a story that I want to finish. That's the gist I'm getting from reading people's responses to this thread--if the story is compelling enough and the writing smooth enough that the stylistic devices aren't popping out like jack-in-the-boxes, then a writer can pull off pretty much anything, including killing off the 1st person POV narrator.


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

purplepen79 said:


> DYB, thank you--as I was reading the thread, I kept trying to think of the Agatha Christie book I'd read in which she had done something similar to what I mention in the OP. I had a serious case of on the-tip-of-my-tongue syndrome and could not, for the life of me, remember the title. So you saved me some serious frustration.
> 
> I've never seen _Sunset Boulevard _ and now realize that I need to. Also, thanks for all the suggestions--_The Spoon River Anthology_ quote gave me a evil chuckle.
> 
> Interesting point about the difference between present tense and past tense--I hadn't thought of that. I have an aversion to present tense the same way some people have an aversion to 1st person POV. I'll read a book written in present tense, but I generally stop reading if the present tense distracts me from the story. Actually, I tend to quit reading if any stylistic device distracts me from the story. I figure if I'm paying more attention to the writing itself than I am to the story, then it's not a story that I want to finish. That's the gist I'm getting from reading people's responses to this thread--if the story is compelling enough and the writing smooth enough that the stylistic devices aren't popping out like jack-in-the-boxes, then a writer can pull off pretty much anything, including killing off the 1st person POV narrator.


"The Murder of Roger Ackroyed" is fantastic and Christie really did something completely new and original with it. And "Sunset Boulevard" is a truly great film; definitely check it out. Aside from the dead narrator it is full of ironies. For example, Norma Desmond's (Gloria Swanson) Butler is played by Erich von Stroheim who directed the real life Swanson in most of her great roles. All the silent movies of herself Desmond watches are, in fact, of Swanson and were directed by von Stroheim. There are inside jokes inside jokes. There's a minor card game scene with Desmond and a few of her friends. One of the friends is Buster Keaton. It's a remarkable film.


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## CJ West (Feb 24, 2010)

Great thread.  Killing a 1st person narrator is a great way to surprise readers, but you are walking a tightrope between delight and anger.

It's one of those things people are going to love or hate.  I have done this ( I won't say in which book). Many people have raved about the ending. They absoltely loved it and talk about it for days. Other people feel cheated. They thought because it was first person that the narrotor *couldn't* die.


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## Linjeakel (Mar 17, 2010)

One of Robert Goddard's books ends with the narrator dying mid sentence. It couldn't have been more unexpected and I thought it was very clever. I hate books where you can guess the ending and I definitely didn't see that one coming!


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

I don't mind the main character dying when written in first person but it has to be handled right.


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

Linjeakel said:


> One of Robert Goddard's books ends with the narrator dying mid sentence. It couldn't have been more unexpected and I thought it was very clever. I hate books where you can guess the ending and I definitely didn't see that one coming!


That's hilarious!


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## MLPMom (Nov 27, 2009)

I think the only story that I remember reading where this was done was actually a trilogy by Christopher Pike. It was a great book(s) and I really liked it. Of course you knew from the beginning she was going to die but it was still handled nicely. I can see why some would be upset by a surprise death ending but sometimes I really enjoy twists and turns like that.


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

Thanks for all the nifty info about _Sunset Boulevard_--I usually enjoy movies/books that have hidden connections and inside jokes. It's like being a kid again and finding Easter eggs. Stephen King does this in several of his books--he'll mention the name of a person in passing who is a main character in another book. For instance, in _The Tommyknockers_, I remember him throwing in a reference to Pennywise from _It_, and it's been years and years since I read either book.



Linjeakel said:


> One of Robert Goddard's books ends with the narrator dying mid sentence. It couldn't have been more unexpected and I thought it was very clever. I hate books where you can guess the ending and I definitely didn't see that one coming!


Wow, talk about a plot twist. That's a very original way to end a book.


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## willentrekin (Dec 6, 2010)

One of my old fiction professors used to say that all stories happen in the past, which I think is where the disconnect (if there is one) lies: a character who has died can't be telling his or her story.

Unless, of course, it's a fantasy, like "The Lovely Bones" you mentioned, or others.  I read "Sandman Slim," by Richard Kadrey not long ago (fantastic book), and the novel opens with the main character returning not just from the dead but also from Hell.  Also fantasy, but noir (think Chandler with demons).


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## scottnicholson (Jan 31, 2010)

That's just one of those "rules" that people pass around in a venture that has no rules. Write what you know? Well, you can't be dead when you write, obviously. I've broken the "dead rule." Some of my favorite books defy the rules. Sure, there's a risk, but it's a greater risk to be dull and ordinary. 

Scott Nicholson


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

One of my film professors in college always threatened us not to make a (student) film that ended with the main character waking up.  And I understand why he didn't want us to do it - college students partake in all kinds of ridiculous excesses.  (Dutch angles anyone?)  But all rules are made to be broken.  Bob Newhart certainly made "waking up and finding out it was all a dream" into something good.  There's no reason why a dead person can't narrate a novel or a movie.  After all, we are talking here about fiction.


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## Pinworms (Oct 20, 2010)

Spoiler



Kings of the Dead, by Tony Faville. The narrator dies. The book gets away with it because it is written in journal format. There are parts of the book where someone else picks up his journal and writes passages, for example his buddy leaves his suicide note in it for him to find. Towards the end of the book, the protagonist dies and his surrogate daughter picks it up and explains what happens after his death. The book was ok until the main character died, then it got pretty awful and ridiculous and it really ruined the book.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

DYB said:


> One of my film professors in college always threatened us not to make a (student) film that ended with the main character waking up. And I understand why he didn't want us to do it - college students partake in all kinds of ridiculous excesses. (Dutch angles anyone?) But all rules are made to be broken. Bob Newhart certainly made "waking up and finding out it was all a dream" into something good. There's no reason why a dead person can't narrate a novel or a movie. After all, we are talking here about fiction.


Yep, rules are made to be broken -- but broken with care. Don't break the rules just for the sake of breaking them -- well, maybe except when doing experimental pieces which you don't care if anyone likes or not. Ravel's "Bolero" was an exercise in orchestration which he was surprised that people liked. Likewise Roger Zelazny's _Creatures of Light and Darkness_ was an experiement that succeeded. From Wikipedia:



> Creatures of Light and Darkness was originally conceived and written as nothing more than a writing exercise in perspective by Roger Zelazny. He wrote it in present tense, constructed an entire chapter in poetry, and made the concluding chapter into the script of a play. He never intended it to be published, but when Samuel R. Delany heard about it from Zelazny, Delany convinced a Doubleday editor to demand that Zelazny give him the manuscript.


But when not venturing into pure experimentation for its own sake, I would suggest that you at least think twice about breaking the rules until you can convince yourself that it has to be that way, not just that it would be cool to do it that way. When breaking a rule doesn't work in fiction, you tend to jerk the reader out of that "willing suspension of disbelief" thing and instead remind them that they are reading a story created by author, instead of _involving_ them in that story.

IMHO, of course.


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## D. Nathan Hilliard (Jun 5, 2010)

I honestly don't view the situation in a first person POV story as the main character necessarily "telling" the story. I view it more as experiencing the events of the story through his eyes and thoughts. I have killed characters in first person POV before...in short stories, of course...and I don't think that it could have been handled in any other way as far as those particular situations were concerned.


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

Now killing someone in the _second_ person, that would be a challenge!


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## sal (Aug 4, 2009)

James Everington said:


> Now killing someone in the _second_ person, that would be a challenge!


It can be done. You just have to bore them to death. 
The nice part is they never complain about the ending.... 

Sal


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## willentrekin (Dec 6, 2010)

I should clarify, I don't think my professor was saying anything about either rules or writing dead people. More like an observation: a book, being a story told, has already happened, and the last word--most of the time--has already been written by the time readers see the first. Which creates a sort of closed system.

That was what I took him to mean. Not about rules or anything. As everyone knows, there are three rules to writing:


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

Great anecdote about Zelazney! It's odd sometimes what works and what doesn't. I heard somewhere that Tchaikovsky's least favorite piece of all the music he wrote was _The Nutcracker Suite_, which just goes to show a creator really has no idea what impact a particular piece may have on other people.

I do think if one's main intention in writing a story is to sound cool or original or break the rules, then that story will most likely fail. Such a story might have its clever moments but ultimately be soulless because the creation of it is driven by a desire to impress, not the desire to tell a story.


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## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

purplepen79 said:


> I do think if one's main intention in writing a story is to sound cool or original or break the rules, then that story will most likely fail. Such a story might have its clever moments but ultimately be soulless because the creation of it is driven by a desire to impress, not the desire to tell a story.


I wrote a short story in college that broke all the rules put forward my professor just to be cool. Looking back at it, it was pretty awful ...


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

As I sit at my computer writing this post, I look around my darkened room, so still in the quiet of the night.  What's that?  A sound from the other room?  No, it must be my imagination.  Wait, there it is again.  A soft scraping noise, like something being dragged across the floor.  I should go see what it is, but fear freezes me to the chair, and I am unable to move.

A shadow moves across the wall and then I see it, a looming shape in the darkness, blacker than an abyss with red glowing eyes.  Eyes that are staring right at me.  I try to scream but nothing comes out.  The only sound is the soft tapping of my fingers on the keyboard.

It's closer now, and its musky scent fills my nostrils, smelling like an overturned shovel of mouldy graveyard dirt.  I can no longer breath as it moves beside me, and suddenly it's cold - a bone chilling cold that freezes my fingers and forces me to type slower.

It's icy fingers slip around my neck, and then tighten like a clown making balloon animals.  The darkness closes in around me, and I realize my life is coming to an end.  The last sound I hear is my fingers on the keyboard, and then they finally stop.


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

swolf said:


> As I sit at my computer writing this post, I look around my darkened room, so still in the quiet of the night. What's that? A sound from the other room? No, it must be my imagination. Wait, there it is again. A soft scraping noise, like something being dragged across the floor. I should go see what it is, but fear freezes me to the chair, and I am unable to move.
> 
> A shadow moves across the wall and then I see it, a looming shape in the darkness, blacker than an abyss with red glowing eyes. Eyes that are staring right at me. I try to scream but nothing comes out. The only sound is the soft tapping of my fingers on the keyboard.
> 
> ...


Did you fall asleep?


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

No, I died!

Luckily, the paramedics revived me.  Turns out it was just my wife coming downstairs to ask when I was coming to bed.  Easy mistake to make.


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## sal (Aug 4, 2009)

swolf said:


> No, I died!
> 
> Luckily, the paramedics revived me. Turns out it was just my wife coming downstairs to ask when I was coming to bed. Easy mistake to make.


Ah, the icy hands of matrimony. Very scary. Maybe that's why a lot of writers wear turtlenecks....

Sal


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## willentrekin (Dec 6, 2010)

swolf said:


> The darkness closes in around me, and I realize my life is coming to an end. The last sound I hear is my fingers on the keyboard, and then they finally stop.


Which I think demonstrates the main issue with doing so, because, as a reader, my first thought was: well, then, how did you post? Did your killer post this? Did he take over your account? Is that whom we're talking to, now? Was that his motive, to kill a KB member and then assume his identity?

The world may never know. You can tell us lol it was just a joke of demonstration, but we can still believe you're SWolf's killer.

Really, I think the answer to this question--and all questions related to techniques and what otherwise might be called "gimmicks" for lack of a better word--is "Can you do it well?" You can do anything so long as you do it well, and the effect serves the story. But if you don't do it well...

Honestly, I never liked the aforementioned _Sunset Boulevard_. Just didn't do it for me, as a movie (was it a book first? Will have to check that out). But I loved _The Lovely Bones_.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

willentrekin said:


> You can tell us lol it was just a joke of demonstration,


I didn't think I had to. It was so absurdly over the top, I assumed even an added '  ' would have been redundant.


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## willentrekin (Dec 6, 2010)

swolf said:


> I didn't think I had to. It was so absurdly over the top, I assumed even an added '  ' would have been redundant.


Right. Absurdly over the top. But did you mean to demonstrate an instance where it worked or one where it didn't, and what would that actually show?

I guess the commenter who mentioned stories aren't written but told through the eyes of a narrator sort of nailed it. Perhaps the disconnect is my own. It's not something I have just with death; I also often wonder when the narrators got the moment to sit down and type out the story they're telling me. Which I guess is why I always think 1st-person POV narrators work best when they're writers.


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## Thalia the Muse (Jan 20, 2010)

I think wondering when they sat down and typed it may be a little over-literal (unless it's presented as a document they wrote out, like an epistolary story) -- they're not typing, they're just there, telling you a story.


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## willentrekin (Dec 6, 2010)

Thalia the Muse said:


> I think wondering when they sat down and typed it may be a little over-literal (unless it's presented as a document they wrote out, like an epistolary story) -- they're not typing, they're just there, telling you a story.


But if I'm reading it, somebody had to write it down at some point. I wonder if it's something about the literality of a book, the physicality of it.

Like I said, there's my disconnect. Though I wonder if that's changing, what with tweets and status updates.

I don't know how I got around it with TLB, now that I think about it. Maybe just because it was so terrific.


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## Thalia the Muse (Jan 20, 2010)

But in that case, who's typing out a third-person omniscient story? Who has all that information about what each person is thinking and feeling? Are all non-first-person stories told by God?


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## willentrekin (Dec 6, 2010)

Thalia the Muse said:


> But in that case, who's typing out a third-person omniscient story? Who has all that information about what each person is thinking and feeling? Are all non-first-person stories told by God?


Heh. Never liked 3rd-omniscient, either. _Anansi Boys_ is a notable exception. But yeah, 3rd-person, I assume the person with his or her name on the cover typed it all down. I tend to think 3rd limited is the way to go: each scene from one POV.

Don't worry, I'm noticing what a strange tic this is.


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## Holly B (Nov 15, 2010)

My husband wrote a 1st person POV story where the narrator dies at the end ("My Name Is Joe"). I agree that writing present tense bugs me, too. He didn't use present tense in this story and it worked beautifully. I think it can be done and be done well.


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## windyrdg (Sep 20, 2010)

I agree that all stories happen in the past. After all, even futuristic events have to have happened for someone to tell about them. However, I don't see any contradiction between the story already having taken place and the narrator being dead. Without opening up a can of worms about competing religious views, I think most people believe that our consciousness...mind...soul...being...goes on after our physical body dies. That being the case, why can't they tell their story?

The thing that can't happen is for the 1st POV character to be actively telling the story and then suddenly get run over by a car or shot in the head. That's sorta crossing the line from past to present.


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## KerylR (Dec 28, 2010)

I recently read a ridiculously bad example of 1POV character "dying."  Turns out she survived (book would have been much, much better if she hadn't).  At first it looked like her ghost was telling the story, and that was cool, but no, she just didn't actually die, even though she told us she was going to.

Meanwhile I'm in the process of writing a story where the narrator does die, which I hope will work.  But it's already a massive tome of genre fiction rule breaking, so killing off the narrator is just the whipped cream on the icing on the cake!


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

Swolf's example worked for me on one level . . . I was laughing so hard I thought I had died at the keyboard too. Honestly, if you're a writer, that's the way to go. Die typing.

I tend to not pay much attention to what POV a particular story is written in unless the writer does it badly or so well that I'm in awe. An example of the latter would be _The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time_, probably the best 1st person POV I've ever read.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

The computer did it.  swolf has died and the computer has attained sentience and uh, oh, I wasn't supposed


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

scarlet said:


> The computer did it. swolf has died and the computer has attained sentience and uh, oh, I wasn't supposed


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## ZankerH (Oct 8, 2010)

It just doesn't make sense to tell the story from the point of "view" from someone who doesn't exist anymore. Most authors that do this excuse it with sci-fi or religious reasons that make no sense at all. 1st person POV is a good dramatic effect, as switching out of it when the narrator dies.


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

ZankerH said:


> It just doesn't make sense to tell the story from the point of "view" from someone who doesn't exist anymore. Most authors that do this excuse it with sci-fi or religious reasons that make no sense at all. 1st person POV is a good dramatic effect, as switching out of it when the narrator dies.


I don't think sense has much to do with it; I don't view narration as having to be from the point of view of someone who could plausibly narrate the events of the plot. A strict view of that rule would rule out all 3rd person narration surely; and what about narration by animals, young children etc.?

It's all just an illusion, 1st person as much as anything else; if you take care over your language and pick the exact words, you can get the willing reader to beleive it.


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

scarlet said:


> The computer did it. swolf has died and the computer has attained sentience and uh, oh, I wasn't supposed


Okay, Hal, settle down. It's not nice, what you're doing to innocent Kindleboarders. Don't make me take a sledgehammer to your control panel . . .



James Everington said:


> I don't think sense has much to do with it; I don't view narration as having to be from the point of view of someone who could plausibly narrate the events of the plot. A strict view of that rule would rule out all 3rd person narration surely; and what about narration by animals, young children etc.?
> 
> It's all just an illusion, 1st person as much as anything else; if you take care over your language and pick the exact words, you can get the willing reader to beleive it.


Nicely stated. All storytelling is a grown-up version of make-believe. If an author manages to suspend disbelief long enough for the reader to buy into the illusion, then that author has succeeded and can pull off just about anything, including a 1st person POV narrator dying mid-sentence.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

purplepen79 said:


> Okay, Hal, settle down. It's not nice, what you're doing to innocent Kindleboarders. Don't make me take a sledgehammer to your control panel . . .


_grumble, okay, okay, I'll zap her back to life. Nobody ever lets me have any fun any more! _
*zzzzzzttttttt*

OUCH! What was I saying again? Why is my neck so stiff and my keyboard covered in diet pepsi?

Off-topic... we actually wrote a mystery story in college in which the computer WAS the murderer.


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

scarlet said:


> _grumble, okay, okay, I'll zap her back to life. Nobody ever lets me have any fun any more! _
> *zzzzzzttttttt*
> 
> OUCH! What was I saying again? Why is my neck so stiff and my keyboard covered in diet pepsi?
> ...


That story sounds like fun! Was it from the POV of the computer? Also, I just noticed--your current Scarlet-in-space avatar fits this off topic ramble rather well.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

purplepen79 said:


> That story sounds like fun! Was it from the POV of the computer? Also, I just noticed--your current Scarlet-in-space avatar fits this off topic ramble rather well.


no, it was from the POV of one of my friends who wrote it.

And all my avatars are courtesy of our own P. Chen. He updated her post NYC blizzard....

_yeah, she'd never do it on her own, she's not computer savvy enough._

Ahem. Down boy!


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

Ah, P. Chen . . . he drew a hysterically funny cartoon for the Rankers Anonymous thread a few weeks ago. Very talented.

For anyone who's still reading this thread (and this is a bit off topic, but still pertinent, I think), do you know of any good stories where the POV is from an inanimate object's perspective? Hans Christian Andersen wrote several wonderful fairy tales from the 3rd person POV of a tin soldier, a shirt collar, a piggy bank, a Christmas fir tree (which I guess is technically an animate object until it gets cut down), and so on and so forth, but I can't think of anyone else at the moment who's pulled this off. Occasionally readers get the perspective of Hill House in Shirley Jackson's _The Haunting of Hill House _ or the Overlook in _The Shining_, but those are possessed/haunted places, so not quite the same thing in my mind.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

no, none of my fellow computers will admit to writing their own stories. the toaster wrote one, but then the silly owner ate the bread. Oh, and by the way, the name's oscar, not HAL.


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

purplepen79 said:


> Ah, P. Chen . . . he drew a hysterically funny cartoon for the Rankers Anonymous thread a few weeks ago. Very talented.
> 
> For anyone who's still reading this thread (and this is a bit off topic, but still pertinent, I think), do you know of any good stories where the POV is from an inanimate object's perspective? Hans Christian Andersen wrote several wonderful fairy tales from the 3rd person POV of a tin soldier, a shirt collar, a piggy bank, a Christmas fir tree (which I guess is technically an animate object until it gets cut down), and so on and so forth, but I can't think of anyone else at the moment who's pulled this off. Occasionally readers get the perspective of Hill House in Shirley Jackson's _The Haunting of Hill House _ or the Overlook in _The Shining_, but those are possessed/haunted places, so not quite the same thing in my mind.


I've always had a vague idea of doing a story from a fixed viewpoint, as if the 'narrator' (for want of a better word) was almost like a camera in the corner, and all the reader knew about was what the characters did/said 'onstage' and they had to fill in the blanks for the other scenes...

I'm really not explaining this well. Suffice to say each attempt at this idea has never gone anywhere... (Any authors reading feel free to nick it.)

That's not quite what you were talking about anyway is it? Ah well, ignore me.


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## akpak (Mar 5, 2009)

A great cinematic example of this is American Beauty. Kevin Spacey's character tells you in the first 30 seconds that he's going to die, but by the end of the movie you've forgotten all about that... Until it happens.


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

scarlet said:


> no, none of my fellow computers will admit to writing their own stories. the toaster wrote one, but then the silly owner ate the bread. Oh, and by the way, the name's oscar, not HAL.


Thank you, Oscar. 3 cheers for the intrepid toaster! I'll make sure to look at my morning pop tart a little more closely, now that I know my toaster wrote notes on it.

Now that I think about it, Howard's watch in _Stranger than Fiction_ becomes a character in the story and affects events. We even learn the watch's thoughts at times. I always thought this was a neat device, and now I know why I liked it so much--it reminded me of Hans Christian Andersen.

Ditto on _American Beauty_. You do forget that he's on the way out during the course of the movie.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Oh, and be careful when erasing your voice messages, I've heard that the sentient cell phone network is working on a short story anthology.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

While you probably cannot call them inanimate objects, as they are quite animate, the various space ships in Iain Banks's "Culture" novels often are important characters. They also have some of the more interesting names.


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

This is going slightly off topic, but I've also just thought of the first chapter of Julian Barnes 'A History of the World in 10 & 1/2 Chapters" which is the story of Noah's Ark narrated by a woodworm (which was the only animal that was refused entry and had to sneak onboard).


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## dpinmd (Dec 30, 2009)

D. Nathan Hilliard said:


> I honestly don't view the situation in a first person POV story as the main character necessarily "telling" the story. I view it more as experiencing the events of the story through his eyes and thoughts.


My thoughts exactly! Also, I guess I just don't get why it's such a bad thing even if you DO know that the main character is going to survive? Isn't the fun of reading watching the story unfold and finding out HOW they survive? (Assuming it's a suspense-y kind of story we're talking about, like The Hunger Games, which I think is one of the books the original poster may have had in mind when raising this topic.) To me, I don't see much difference between reading a suspense book with a first-person narrative vs. a suspense book with a third-person narrative that's one of a series with the same main character. Either way, you "know" to some extent that the protagonist is going to make it -- why would that ruin the enjoyment of the story? (And then there's the whole issue of non-fiction -- if there's no point in reading if you know "how it ends," why would anyone bother with non-fiction at all? There, not only do you know how it ends, but often you may know a lot of what happens in between. But (IMO), it's still worthwhile to see how a good writer tells the story.)


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

Dpinmd~

Thank you for your post.  As someone who routinely jumps ahead in a book or even reads the ending before the beginning, I'm much more interested in character development than in specific plot events.  Don't get me wrong--I enjoy an exciting story.  However, a narrator can endure terrible non-lethal trials that still contribute to character development and make for a compelling read.  The possibility of the narrator's physical death does not necessarily add suspense to the story, particularly if the narrator is a static character with no interesting internal struggles.  I'd much rather have a living narrator with fascinating depth and shades of gray than a dozen dead narrators with no more complexity than cardboard.


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## SidneyW (Aug 6, 2010)

I guess it's kind of an aside, but I read, I think in the Book of Lists, that Sunset Boulevard originally included a scene in which William Holden's character was rolled into the morgue and the various corpses there began sharing their stories. That's how his first-person voice-over was originally book-ended as he gave his account.

Apparently the scene drew laughter and was cut.


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## SidneyW (Aug 6, 2010)

Found some discussion about it on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_Boulevard_%28film%29#Reaction


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## akpak (Mar 5, 2009)

Here's TVTropes' page on this:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PosthumousNarration

Although.. be careful. As XKCD has it:


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## willentrekin (Dec 6, 2010)

Nice XKCD find, though now I have to go back through the archives to see what the alt-rollover text was.


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## akpak (Mar 5, 2009)

Its title is "Tab Explosion"


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## ◄ Jess ► (Apr 21, 2010)

akpak said:


> Here's TVTropes' page on this:
> http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PosthumousNarration


Shoot, I should have listened to the warning from xkcd...this site is way too interesting.


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

SidneyW said:


> I guess it's kind of an aside, but I read, I think in the Book of Lists, that Sunset Boulevard originally included a scene in which William Holden's character was rolled into the morgue and the various corpses there began sharing their stories. That's how his first-person voice-over was originally book-ended as he gave his account.
> 
> Apparently the scene drew laughter and was cut.


Whoa . . . sounds like something that might happen in _Six Feet Under_.


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## screwballl (Jan 4, 2011)

I tend to see these types of books where it is the narrator is dealing with the character in first person, and if the person dies, then it is still the narrator. the character is not the narrator, it is a separate entity... kind of like the sorty from a ghost inside the main character who moves out and still there if the persons physical body dies.


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## Holly B (Nov 15, 2010)

purplepen79 said:


> Ah, P. Chen . . . he drew a hysterically funny cartoon for the Rankers Anonymous thread a few weeks ago. Very talented.
> 
> For anyone who's still reading this thread (and this is a bit off topic, but still pertinent, I think), do you know of any good stories where the POV is from an inanimate object's perspective? Hans Christian Andersen wrote several wonderful fairy tales from the 3rd person POV of a tin soldier, a shirt collar, a piggy bank, a Christmas fir tree (which I guess is technically an animate object until it gets cut down), and so on and so forth, but I can't think of anyone else at the moment who's pulled this off. Occasionally readers get the perspective of Hill House in Shirley Jackson's _The Haunting of Hill House _ or the Overlook in _The Shining_, but those are possessed/haunted places, so not quite the same thing in my mind.


I read a book when I was a kid called "Prune" that was told from the first person POV of...you guessed it...a plum! That story really stuck out in my head and I remember it as one of my favorite stories. It's probably not as entertaining now that I'm an adult, but it definitely was different. http://www.amazon.com/Prune-Ramon-Royal-Ross/dp/0689310560/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1294675850&sr=1-6


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## Steve Silkin (Sep 15, 2010)

purplepen79 said:


> do you know of any good stories where the POV is from an inanimate object's perspective?


tibor fischer's 'the collector collector.' contemporary love story told from the point of view of an antique bowl, witness to many wonderful and perverse events of the past 5,000 years. great book. here's a quick glimpse i just found:

http://www.spikemagazine.com/0997coll.php


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

Thanks for the recs!  The antique bowl story sounds particularly intriguing.  I used to work with artifacts in a history museum, and I always wondered what stories the artifacts could tell if they could communicate somehow.


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

Steve Silkin said:


> tibor fischer's 'the collector collector.' contemporary love story told from the point of view of an antique bowl, witness to many wonderful and perverse events of the past 5,000 years. great book. here's a quick glimpse i just found:
> 
> http://www.spikemagazine.com/0997coll.php


Sounds great!


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## LaFlamme (Dec 9, 2010)

The song "El Paso" has always bugged me for this reason. The singer/narrator is recounting the details leading to his demise. To achieve that with chronological accuracy, he'd have to be singing post mortem. Of course, country singers were grittier back in those days.


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## Steve Silkin (Sep 15, 2010)

i think the end is extemporaneous

http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/robbins-marty/el-paso-11889.html

notice that the end is in present tense; i think he dies when he sings the last word.

however, the narrator of the band's 'long black veil' is indeed telling the story post-mortem

http://www.asklyrics.com/display/band/long-black-veil-lyrics.htm


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## LaFlamme (Dec 9, 2010)

Steve Silkin said:


> i think the end is extemporaneous
> 
> http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/robbins-marty/el-paso-11889.html
> 
> notice that the end is in present tense; i think he dies when he sings the last word.


Well that's another way of looking at it. Good news for Marty Robbins. The bad news: I have that damn song stuck in my head now.


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## Thalia the Muse (Jan 20, 2010)

Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights has a dead narrator, too.


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

LaFlamme said:


> The song "El Paso" has always bugged me for this reason. The singer/narrator is recounting the details leading to his demise. To achieve that with chronological accuracy, he'd have to be singing post mortem. Of course, country singers were grittier back in those days.


I just had my best laugh of the day.

I love the song Long Black Veil. Used to sing it at work all the time. I especially love the bit "And at night, she cries on my bones." I'd sing that bit extra loud.


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## LaFlamme (Dec 9, 2010)

I love the song Long Black Veil. Used to sing it at work all the time. I especially love the bit "And at night, she cries on my bones." I'd sing that bit extra loud. 
[/quote]

That's both grisly and poetic.
Mostly grisly. I like it!


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

LaFlamme said:


> That's both grisly and poetic.
> Mostly grisly. I like it!


Being rather gothic in my sensibilities, I take that as a high compliment.


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## LaFlamme (Dec 9, 2010)

purplepen79 said:


> Being rather gothic in my sensibilities, I take that as a high compliment.


As you should. It's a nice line, even if it was uttered from the grave.


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## Guest (Jan 13, 2011)

purplepen79 said:


> "Just a question . . . I've seen this remark in various forms on several threads now, and I don't quite understand. Why, when a book is written in 1st person, do people assume that the narrator can't die? I mean, I get that you need a narrator to tell the story, but can't that person die at the end? Or even narrate after he or she is dead? Susie Salmon dies in _The Lovely Bones_ and that's all 1st person."
> 
> What are your thoughts about this? Do you know of any other books besides _The Lovely Bones_ in which a 1st person narrator dies? If so, I'd be interested to hear about them. Susan Howatch's books such as _Cashelmara_ have multiple 1st person narrators, and sometimes those characters die, but I can't think of any others at the moment.


I will tell you what I tell every writer who sends me a first person narrative in which the narrator dies at the end.

To whom, pray tell, is the narrator talking to? And how is he/she communing from the great beyond? Have I, as a reader, been conversing with a zombie for the entire story? Did I as a reader develop some psionic ability to speak with the dead? First person narratives are about the relationship between the narrator and the reader. When the narrator dies at the end, everything the reader thought they understood about that relationship is screwed up.

Yes, some writers pull it off. Poe actually did this a great deal in his short stories. But to do it takes actual planning to make sure the reader's expectations aren't completely screwed up in the process. In most cases, having the narrator die at the end is the same as saying "IT WAS ALL A DREAM!" You do it wrong, you tick off the reader. Most writers do it wrong, because they are doing it for the wrong reason. They are trying to have a "surprise ending" or just be different.


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

Interesting take, Julie.  I hadn't thought of it that way before, but 1st person is the most direct way a character communicates with a reader.  I agree that it's a high tightrope for a writer to walk successfully.  Part of my original issue when I posted the OP is this remark I've seen several times now from readers on various forums that when they read a book in 1st person, the suspense was gone because they knew the narrator would have to live in order to tell the story.  I don't agree with the idea that the possibility of a character/narrator dying is the only way a writer can generate suspense.  There are all kinds of ways a good writer can create suspense without killing off a character.  I don't mind death in stories, but some writers seem to revel in gratuitous death scenes the same way some writers revel in gratuitous sex scenes.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Just something on a related note: I recently finished reading Charles Stross's _Halting State_, which is written in second person present tense. That almost kept me from even finishing the sample, but I ended up sticking with it and really quite enjoyed it overall. Presumably Stross chose to write it this way to emulate the way many computer games "talk" to the gamer, but I think I would have preferred it otherwise. Still a worthwhile read if you have at least a little geek in you.  I'm just curious if anyone else has read it or anything else written that way (if there is anything?) and how you reacted to it.


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## Steve Silkin (Sep 15, 2010)

NogDog said:


> I'm just curious if anyone else has read it or anything else written that way (if there is anything?) and how you reacted to it.


i liked jay mcinerney's 'story of my life,' which was written in second person. he wrote it in 1988. he based one of the main characters on a young woman he knew named rielle hunter. two decades later, she went on to, uh, become famous for, uh, other reasons.


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## Amy Corwin (Jan 3, 2011)

NogDog said:


> Just something on a related note: I recently finished reading Charles Stross's _Halting State_, which is written in second person present tense. That almost kept me from even finishing the sample, but I ended up sticking with it and really quite enjoyed it overall.


When I start a book written in present tense, I generally can't finish it. Any I will never buy anything else from that author again. Occassionally I forget to read at least the first paragraph and buy a book by mistake, but then I can't get past the first page and I give the book away. It's just too much like a bad session of Dungeons and Dragons or other role playing game. I know I'm in the minority and ought to learn to appreciate it for some reason, but it just irritates the heck out of me. I literally can't stand it. I've only read one book where the author carried it off, but she was wise enough to write mostly dialogue while writing scenery descriptions and a few other parts in past tense so it wasn't all "I see a distant hill" kind of malarky. I can't even remember the name of the author or book, but there you are. I've tried many, many times to get past page one, but there is a sing-song role playing, "I spy with my little eye" quality to present tense that...well...I've already gone on too long about it.

I'm present-tense phobic and there you are.


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## Annalinde Matichei (Jan 23, 2011)

An interesting thought occurs to me concerning the Fourth Wall.

In comics, games or movies, "breaking the fourth wall" essentially consists in acknowledging to the experiencer that the story she is seeing _is_ a comic, game or movie. It tends to be considered a touch surreal or "post-modern", though it has happened at times since the dawn of these media.

What interests me is that our surprise at the death of a first-person narrator seems to imply the _reverse_ of this situation in literary fiction - that the "fourth wall" is broken or transparent by definition, and the unusual thing is to try to establish a "fourth-walled" experience.

When the narrator dies we immediately tend to think "well, who wrote all this then?" The implication of this is that, in contrast to movies and other media, we are always _explicitly_ conscious of the fact that this is a written document and are regarding it as such, whereas in the movie we are supposed to _forget_ that the experience is on celluloid, and reminding us of that is considered mildly subversive.

Just a curious thought.


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## Patrick Skelton (Jan 7, 2011)

I think it's assumed that the narrator is alive at the end retelling the story, but that doesn't have to be the case.

Remember the movie American Beauty with Kevin Spacey?  He dies in the beginning, but narrates the whole story of how it happened.


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

Annalinde Matichei said:


> An interesting thought occurs to me concerning the Fourth Wall.
> 
> In comics, games or movies, "breaking the fourth wall" essentially consists in acknowledging to the experiencer that the story she is seeing _is_ a comic, game or movie. It tends to be considered a touch surreal or "post-modern", though it has happened at times since the dawn of these media.
> 
> What interests me is that our surprise at the death of a first-person narrator seems to imply the _reverse_ of this situation in literary fiction - that the "fourth wall" is broken or transparent by definition, and the unusual thing is to try to establish a "fourth-walled" experience.


I think that's an interesting point - we don't think "who's filming this then?" when we watch a film. There's lots of ways to break the 4th wall in fiction though - I _think_ it's Malone Dies by Samual Beckett where he breaks off a description in the middle by saying "too much effing scenery"

As the title Malone Dies implies as well, this is also a first-person narrator dies book too, which ties back to the topic at hand. It's a very clever way of doing it, where the text just seems to break down at the end, with sentences become fragments, then just isolated words.


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## Annalinde Matichei (Jan 23, 2011)

I can think of two possible reasons for this "fourth wall" difference in literature:

1. Movies, comics, games, etc. are all products of more than one mind/actor. The novel involves, in a sense, a personal relation to the author.

2. A first-person narrative actually does something rarely done in other media - fusing the telling-medium with a character in the story. A movie like _I Am A Camera_ does this, but it is very rare. And even then, seeing the film through a character's eyes is a present-tense experience. We do not have the sense a novel has to give of the character looking back on past events (and therefore by implication being alive to do so).

EDIT: Oopsies, I don't think I mean _I am A Camer_a - but there are a few movies where the entire thing is filmed through the main character's eyes - so we never see the main character except in a mirror. Didn't Dick Powell make a detective movie like that?


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