“I had always been the sensible one.” Someone begins their essay with these words. They seem, of course, like a statement that is true. But are they actually the author, or are they the narrator of the text? “I” is that actually the author? Or is the narrator a liar, misguided, in self-defense, or simply telling you exactly what they want you to believe? When we begin to understand and keep separate our own voice as the author and the voice of the narrative, it becomes a lot easier to find irony, limited knowledge, and discrepancy between what characters say they do, and what the text shows they do.
Look back at the first-person passage. Try it out: write down what the narrator says about the argument and then list one bit of textual evidence that backs up their claim (or contradicts it). A narrator might say, “The argument over which movie to watch wasn’t really that big of a deal, but I wrote down that he crossed his arms; they said nothing, looked at the ground, and he cleared his throat.” The author set that up; the narrator may not even understand. The gap in between the claims, and then the evidence of how it plays out, is a great place to start your analysis of what that means.
We have to separate the characters in the text, too. Even if the story is written in the first-person narration, the narrator may not be one of the characters; in the third-person narrative, the narrator can get so close to a character’s thoughts as to seem like a character herself/himself. This is what we refer to as the point of view; it dictates what the reader is told about a character. If in one scene, we see how one character feels afraid, we may not know at all what another character in the scene means or feels; that doesn’t necessarily mean the second character is malicious or evil, it just means we, as the reader, are only allowed to view one character through this text, so it is the other character whose feelings and actions we must interpret through dialogue and behavior and assumptions.
Where the problem can arise in reading is if a student writes, “The author feels the character is selfish,” because she is only quoting a character who has accused the person as selfish. To be more accurate, the reader might write, “The narrator is suggesting the character feels selfish,” or, “the brother feels that the woman who refuses to answer is being selfish.” That allows a student to consider whether that judgment is supported or not; what other evidence supports that judgment? Is there counter-evidence to the judgment later in the text? What else might be happening to make that judgment seem uncertain?
Look for clues in the words themselves to try to determine where your voice is coming from, what tone or attitude the text conveys. A narrator may say, “It was a pathetic-looking room,” but a reader may know from context clues that it is a comfortable, cared-for place. Another character may talk about another as, “He’s just so cold,” when the text implies he’s simply slow to warm up to a new acquaintance rather than being mean or unfriendly to begin with. Any word of judgment is being said by a particular voice in the text, and that voice, that judgment, will need to be considered in the context of who is saying it, how much they seem to know about what they claim they’re judging, and what they would want the reader or other character to know about them.
Try this when you are reading: mark or note the opinionated statements versus the text-based claims. He closed the door, but he closed the door to punish me. A claim may be true, but it must be tested. Does the text support the claim? Is it repeated later in the novel? What comes later in the story? Identifying the characters, who is doing the speaking, who is doing the judging, and when they are doing it, helps a lot more than just assuming all of your claims are what the author feels.