In estimating the availability of a mode of narration the writer should consider the matter of length. The adoption of the omniscient viewpoint may carry the story unnecessarily beyond due limits, for the writer who has taken to himself the privilege to know all facts and motives may be led into depicting events or analyzing character for his own pleasure, rather than because the story demands it. If a story demands space, space it must have, but the essence of literary power and artistry is to write with the utmost brevity and pungency compatible with adequate expression. The story must be told; every essential phase must be brought out; but unsignificant words can only do their bit toward spoiling the desired effect. The adoption of a too inclusive mode of narration may lead the writer astray; conversely, the mode of narration most nearly suited to the necessities of his story will aid in holding his pen to the line. If the story is of action, unconcerned with motives save by implication, and the writer tells it in the first person, or in the third person from the viewpoint of a single character, he will be led to confine himself to the depiction of the panorama of events, which is the work in hand. Yet, if the story requires that the reader be given a direct view of the spiritual workings of large numbers of characters, the writer must tell it in the third person and assume universal knowledge as to event and spirit. A mode of narration must be deliberately selected for each new story with due regard to its idiosyncrasies, and to make the choice correctly cannot fail to be of great advantage.
It is often stated that having settled upon what is most narrowly termed a mode of narration and most broadly a viewpoint the writer should be sedulous not to depart from it. The writer of the short story should not alter the narrative point of view, for obvious reasons. The short story is short; it depends for its power upon dramatic effect; and in writing it there is no occasion or excuse for any shifting of outlook. The short story is artistically the strictest form of prose fiction, that is, it is most strictly subject to the conventions of the art of fiction, of which maintenance of the point of view is one. But the novel is a much looser form, and unless the particular story is uniquely uniform in texture, as the frank tale of adventure, shifting the point of view often will prove necessary.
If the author of a novel has chosen to write with knowledge of the inner workings of more than one of the characters, but not with knowledge of all, so that he relates from the viewpoint of several characters, rather than the viewpoint of some impersonal observer to whom the souls of all are open, numerous shifts of viewpoint will be necessary. They are implied in the mode of narration itself. The world cannot be looked at through the eyes and souls of a succession of characters without a succession of shifts. All this merely amounts to saying that certain modes of narration which cannot be employed in writing the strict short story may be freely employed in writing the novel. In the case of the novel, or of the story that is somewhat brief without being a strict short story, the task is not so much never to shift the viewpoint, rather always to indicate the shift with clearness. Just as the reader's interest should be the first consideration in choosing matter and devising a plot, clarity to the reader must be considered when any shift in the narrative point of view becomes necessary. Let the shift be avowed and obvious; any uncertainty can lead only to confusion.
It follows that writers who have chosen to tell their stories from the viewpoints of several characters will prove the most profitable for study as to how to shift viewpoint without confusing a reader. Chiefly, of course, they are novelists, Eliot, Balzac, Hardy, Scott, and an infinity of lesser lights. Galsworthy, for instance, in each of his chapters succeeds in producing a singular unity of effect, with corresponding clarity for the reader, chiefly by making his shifts of viewpoint coincide with shifts of scene and person.[G]
Inextricably bound up with the mode of narration and the general narrative viewpoint of the story is the matter of the author's own attitude toward the story. The distinction between these matters is fine, but real. It is possible that a given story may be told, adequately so far as the bare story is concerned, in any one of several different ways. Narration in the first person by a major or a minor character may be employed, or the author may write in the third person, assuming knowledge of all events and of the inner workings of one, some, or all of the characters. But there is another consideration. The whole conception may depend for its appeal upon what I am forced to call very roughly sympathy for a character or group of characters, and a mode of narration must be employed which will enable the author to express his sympathy that he may evoke the reader's.
I do not wish to shift the discussion into the field of ethics, but the point is that any chain of events may be colored in the telling favorably or unfavorably to the persons concerned. A coarse instance is afforded by a prosecution for crime. In making their final arguments to the jury, prosecuting attorney and attorney for the defense alike deal with the same facts in evidence, but on the lips of one the defendant will be a glorified and persecuted saint. A more delicate instance is afforded by Stevenson's "The Ebb Tide," previously mentioned. Robert Herrick commits all the criminal acts committed by Huish, the cockney clerk, except to attempt murder, but the reader pities Herrick while hating Huish. This is so because Stevenson writes of Herrick with a measure of sympathy, and tells the story, though in the third person, almost entirely from his point of view. But of Huish we have only his acts and words. The treatment of him is wholly objective.
The story which develops a chain of events tending to show a character or group of characters in a strongly unfavorable light should not be told too objectively, or the reader will be repelled by its uniform ugliness, a matter which must be considered in choosing a mode of narration. It is not a point of morals, but one of contrast. If the writer has no sympathy for one or some of his people, or writes in such manner that he cannot express any predilection, they will appear all of a piece to a reader, with a consequent loss of interest. In this very real sense the story whose characters are uniformly repellent may be said to be bad art.
Generally, therefore, the writer must consider the necessities of his story in determining the mode of narration, and must also consider his own attitude toward its people and their doings. Its appeal to him may lie in his sympathy for some person or persons, and unless that sympathy be given expression in some way the story may not have an equal appeal to a reader. The perfect fiction is a congruous expression of a phase of life, and in it the more subtle matters of life, sympathy and predilection have their place.