Whenever we read a piece of narrative — a poem, short story or passage of a novel — there is a basic and important question to be asked: who is telling the story? Do we see things from a god’s eye view, told by an omniscient narrator who can see all things, including the thoughts of the characters, and express those thoughts more articulately than the characters could themselves? Or do we see events from the limited point of view of one character, or several? Is the narrator unreliable — that is, apparently not in command of all the facts and implications of the story being told?
There are many techniques of narration, and one of the most fascinating is ‘free indirect discourse’. This is used extensively by modern novelists, so it is worth taking a close look at how it works.
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