The Rhetoric _ of Fiction Second Edition BY WAYNE C. BOOTH TNE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS ®@CHAPTER SIX Types of Narration seen that the author cannot ch Ose only the kind of rhetoric he et affect his readers’ evaluations by he can only choose whether to do |As dramatists have always known, even the purest of dramas ly dramatic in the sense of being entirely presented, en- ing place in the moment. fo be represented, some to be related.”! But related by dramatist must decide, and the novelist’s case is dif ly in that the choices open to him are more numerous. think through the many narrative devices in the fiction we the embarrassing inadequacy of lonal classification of “point of view” into three or four Dranntic Poy (1658). Thowgh this quotation come fom Hof Feach daa, tod wo om Neato who eons tag pition taken fo gtd in Nears eg heal re a hore Bt be sores 149Purity and Rhetoric and Strether, through ‘comes to us, we realize both as a summary of the preceding chapters and as a basis {0f Parts If and THI, Penson Perhaps the most overworked distinction is that of pers. that a story is told in the first or the third person? will ing of importance unless we become more precise and desc Pe f= pati: om ‘expect to find useful criteria in a distinction that throws al into two, or at most three, heaps. In this pile we see Henry "Your eyes are ony hal ee eee tie pits boo ety om ying one's vision with the “vous” i distinctions apply to both first- and of Narration bI it first-person novels, since Strether in large part “narrates” m story, even though he is always referred to in the third et evidence that this distinction Ibeen claimed is scen in the fact that al /-person narration Daaacarizep np Unpranarizep Nagrators the most important differences in narrative effect depend ther the narrator is dramatized in his own right and on ther his beliefs and characteristics are shared by the author, implied author (the author's “second undramatized there is no ingway cxe- umatized narratorsStories are usually not so rigorously a5 “The Killers”; most tales are presented as passing the consciousness of a t “T” or a“ rama much of what we are given is narrated by someone, jare often as much interested in the effect on the narrator's ig what else the author has . When Horatio tells of his fist encounter with the ghost his own charac tus as we listen, In that underlie the seemingly simple rations between ceate as they write can be f