The Narrator: A Response

Note: This began as a comment to Joe’s post from 6/21, but it grew too lengthy. I’ve subdivided it further with the acknowledgment that no one likes to read a long, unbroken block of text on a computer screen.

The Narrator as Character

I’ve finished Book II, and the Narrator is still a complete mystery to me. I haven't seen any evidence, as Rick suggests, that the Narrator is a monk who lives at the monastery; in fact, we still don’t know the most basic questions: (1) who the Narrator is; and (2) what the Narrator’s relationship is to the characters (has he interacted with them, does he know them personally, etc.). All we know is that the Narrator lived in their (unnamed) town while the events of the story took place.

In Book II, Chapter III, the Narrator finally refers to an episode of his own life, recalling the “possessed” women he witnessed during his childhood (p.52 in the Modern Library College Edition). But I can’t gleam any factual information about his character from this memory.

If the Narrator is a character, he is woefully undeveloped at this point.

The Question of Reliability

But if the Narrator’s voice is not that of the author, a distinction we must preserve, then what purpose does this character serve? The unreliable narrator is a rather modern convention. I don't know what Dostoevsky has to gain by having the reader doubt his narrator’s credibility. Why not use the omniscient third person, and avoid any questioning on the reader’s part? Perhaps Dostoevsky wishes to remove the reader’s sense of distance from the fictional world, which a third-person or anonymous narration often creates.

I do not recall specific examples of the Narrator saying he does not know whether his facts are correct. But there are several instances where he states the source of his facts, and many more times when the Narrator provides no evidence to support things he couldn’t possibly know. As an example of the former, concerning the will of the general’s widow (who raised the two youngest brothers), the Narrator admits, “I have not read the will myself, but I heard…” (Book I, Ch. III, p.12). See also “The Scandalous Scene,” Book II, Ch. VIII, p.97 (“Rakitin related afterwards…”; “Rakitin found out about all these good things…”). For examples of the latter, simply look to any of the interior monologues. See, e.g., “A Young Man Bent on a Career,” Book II, Ch. VII, p.88 (“Alyosha believed that implicitly. But how could he be left without him? How could he live without seeing and hearing him? Where should he go? He had told him not to weep, and to leave the monastery. Good God! It was long since Alyosha had known such anguish.”)

Are we to suspend our disbelief in the Narrator’s omniscient power, or take such passages as mere guesswork?

An Unnecessary Distraction

Or is there an inconsistency in the narrative voice? In the above quote from “A Young Man Bent on a Career,” you could argue that the interior monologue is in fact the narrator’s voice, an account of Alyosha’s probable thoughts. But “Good God!” can only be Alyosha’s thought itself. Also, in “The Scandalous Scene,” we seem to be in Fyodor’s mind just before he “play[s] his last prank,” with statements such as “he really had meant to go home,” and “he remembered his own word’s at the elder’s” (p.98)—thoughts the Narrator could not possibly be privy to. But in this same passage, we get: “Not that he was so very much ashamed of himself—quite the contrary perhaps.” Perhaps? Is this more conjecture? Are we only getting a partial glimpse into each character’s mind?

Quite simply, if we start analyzing passages for inconsistencies in the narrator’s point-of-view (which is anyway rather nebulous), we will never get through the book, much less enjoy it. And fiction is meant for enjoyment, above all. (Note that the verb ‘enjoy’ has two meanings: to take pleasure in something and to benefit from or make use of it.) I don’t wish to imply that I’ve been struggling with the narrative voice at every page. It’s been at the back of my mind, but I’ve blissfully ignored it and have really enjoyed the story so far.

An Individual Perspective?

Until more details emerge (although I’m beginning to think they may never), I am almost willing to treat the Narrator as a sort of communal “voice of the town,” despite the use of first-person singular. You may have noticed that the Narrator always refers to the monastery as “our monastery.” To me, this does not evince that he is a member of the monastery, but that his narrative is a collective memory. Indeed, from the very opening lines of the story, the Narrator speaks in plural number: Fyodor was “well known in our district,” “still remembered among us,” and a “‘landowner’—for so we used to call him.”

This doesn’t solve the problem of the Narrator’s near omniscience, but I’m willing to accept everything he says as the truth, or as close to the truth as memory can get.