the voice of a minor character
Paley might have considered presenting the narrative through the voice of a minor character as a first-person speaker. For example, Samuel’s mother, who understands that there will never be another boy like Samuel, could have told the tale, but she wasn’t present when the accident on the subway occurred, so she couldn’t have described it in close detail. All the women and men in the subway car who witnessed Samuel’s death were minor characters in the drama. They could have gone home to their families or friends that evening and told the story of the accident as eye witnesses, using first-person narration. No doubt their stories would have been highly emotional-“I can’t believe what happened on the Lexington Avenue express today. I’ve been riding the subway all my life, and I’ve never seen anything like it” -but their personal accounts, while dramatic, would lack Paley’s compassionate insight into what the loss of the young boy’s life really means.
The first-person narrator, whether a major or a minor character, can be reliable or unreliable, making us aware as we read his or her story that the account is skewed and that we can’t quite trust the point of view. In a story such as Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (p. 320), the garrulous lawyer telling us about his difficult relationship with his eccentric scrivener is actually a minor character in Bartleby’s life. Despite his obvious concern for Bartleby and attempts to help him , the lawyer inadvertently serves as a screen between the reader and the protagonist of the story, making it impossible for us to understand Bartleby’s point of view. At the beginning of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (p. 157), the first-person narrator, who is the major character in the story, says that she is trying to regain her health after
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a mental breakdown. While she tells her story, an attentive reader notices that her disorientation from the so-called real world becomes much more acute. Both Melville and Gilman choose first-person narrators to heighten the emo tional effect of their stories.
Third-Person Narration
Third-person narration means that the author tells the story using the pronouns he or she instead of the presumably more subjective I. Paley uses third-person narration in “Samuel.” The narrator isn’t a person who partici pates in the story, but she knows everything about it. She is an omniscient narrator, aware that the boys’ mothers gave them permission to take the sub way downtown and see the missile exhibit on Fourteenth Street in Manhattan. Despite the short length of her tale, Paley communicates her authority as the storyteller because she is so knowledgeable about the incident. We trust her to get the story right and to help us understand what happened. Most people enjoy reading stories told by omniscient narrators, anticipating that they will usually find meaning in the events that they describe.
