Reading Novels Like A Professor: Chapters 3 & 4—Who’s in Charge Here? and Never Tru...

Reading Novels Like A Professor: Chapters 3 & 4—Who’s in Charge Here? and Never Tru...: "Identify and analyze the narrative perspective of the novel. Discuss the effect of this choice using specific examples from the text."

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s, Crime and Punishment, the author uses an omniscient third person narrator. This style of narrating helps the reader understand all aspects of each scenario within the novel. The narration follows the main character Rodion Raskolnikov’s whereabouts, feelings, and thoughts. The omniscient, or all knowing, style of narration also allows the reader to obtain glimpses into other character’s lives and thoughts. Although the narrator does not say exactly what the supporting characters are thinking and feeling, he uses the freedom of third person narration to give hints or vague clues based on their physical appearance and body language. These physical aspects are being witnessed by the main protagonist and then explained by the narrator. In Crime and Punishment, the main character, Raskolnikov, is being stared at by a man. The narrator then describes what the main character is seeing, as well as possible explanations for this man’s strange behavior. “He looked repeatedly at the clerk, partly no doubt because the latter was starring persistently at him, obviously anxious to enter into conversation. The clerk looked at the other persons in the room, including the tavern keeper, as though he were used to their company, and weary of it, showing at the same time a shade of patronizing contempt for them as members of a culture inferior to his own, with whom it would be useless for him to converse”(14). The omniscient aspects of third person narrating also allow the reader to see and know more than the main character. When Raskolnikov walks into a bar the owner is nowhere to be seen, but the narrator states that, “The owner of the establishment was in another room, but he frequently came down some steps into the main room” (13). Third person omniscient narrating is very helpful to the reader. It allows them to see things that even characters in the story or not able to see. It also is helps the reader understand the plot more thoroughly and correctly.

-Conner Furr