Different Types of Second-Person Narrative
Different Types
of Second-Person
Narrative
Interrogating the narrative ‘I’ against the ‘You’
Natalie Sakarintr
The ‘How-to’ Second Person
Authorial Intrusion in Second-Person Narrative
Second-person narrative has been a longstanding point of contention; from the confusion that usually prompts the reader to ask who the ‘you’ is, to complexities of perspective. While it is often mishandled or misinterpreted, second-person narrative actually has three (if not more) functions in narrative fiction. By narrowing the narrative scope, the writer widens character scope and within the text emerge characters which are unable to be present in first- or third-person narrative. These characters bring in a separation between author and narrator, and reader and narratee.
In this form of narrative second person, the author writes from a place of instruction, of prior knowledge, to educate the reader, or the you. Consider Marisa McCarthy’s short story ‘Cliché Rape Story’, and the author’s writing from the future conditional, instructing the future you:
When you get back to your dorm room, you tell everyone you had food poisoning. When they ask you where you got it you feel bad blaming the perfectly good restaurant you had eaten at earlier that Friday.
McCarthy’s writing in the future conditional, coupled with the second person, introduces a layered character that is not immediately apparent; underneath the you there is an I. The reader usually takes on the narrative you but is then left to question who the I is—not the author but a character or narrator on their own behalf. Matt Delconte identifies how-to narration as dividing two ‘tellers’ of the fictional story: the narrator who speaks to the narratee and the author who communicates to the reader. It is interesting that the you in McCarthy’s story is interchangeable with an I, that the story could be shifted into first person with little change to the narrative. This is a usual characteristic of second person; the I and you are interchangeable in the way they mark the person. It is this duality of the I and you that sets the story apart; that coupled with the subject matter alludes to the specificity and also universality of experience.
The I character in the how-to second-person narrative, especially in the future conditional, speaks from an almost omniscient perspective; they are all-knowing and all-seeing, speaking to the you as an instructor, mentor or even as a warning. This is where we see the emergence of what Joshua Parker calls a ‘blank textual figure.’ Readers often feel encouraged to identify with this figure, imaging this ‘other’ as themselves. Is it possible then that this omniscient I is a blend of first person and third person? They are speaking from a point of view, as first person is, and they are omniscient, as third person is.
We are also prompted to ask whether the narrative itself moves above the literal text and into another plane—where the interaction between I and you are not limited to the confines of fiction but are able to transcend the text itself. There is a sense of control and power exerted over the reader in the how-to narrative—a mode of participation rather than immersion where the reader can act only as the narrator tells them to, blindly following their actions and demands.
“There is a sense of control and power exerted over the reader in the how-to narrative.”
While the how-to narrative places the reader in an active position, participating in the story almost as if a character themselves, authorial intrusion in a second-person narrative firmly pushes the reader outside of the text. The reader is reminded that they are a voyeur, a passive participant—they can only watch and observe. Daniel Handler, writing under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket, not only uses authorial intrusion as a device in A Series of Unfortunate Events but also creates an authorial character (Snicket) who intrudes on the text and communicates directly with the reader. Consider the opening of A Bad Beginning:
If you are interested in stories with happy endings you would be better off reading some other book … I’m sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.
By addressing the reader directly, Handler pushes them out of the narrative—this is not escapist fiction where you become one of the Baudelaire children, you are merely reading their story. The reader doesn’t become a character—as they can in first-person narratives they are, and will only ever be, the observer of the story.
The pseudonym of Snicket, and Snicket’s eventual intrusion into the plot of the novels gives the I that is behind the you a character, a personality. If sections of Handler’s novels are written in second person but the voice speaking to the reader is in itself, a construct, what effect does this have on the way we interact with second-person texts? According to Joshua Parker, some authors who write in second person do so as a way of attaining a certain distance between themselves and the text; second person allows them to speak as themselves behind a sort of veil. This further implies that second-person narrative stems from the author’s attempts to speak as themselves in the text. Is there then an implied realness to the character behind the second-person voice that is integral to second-person narrative?
That is, does our assumption that the voice behind the I is the author or something similar disrupt our understanding or grasp on second person? What happens when this I is not only an ambiguous character but a fully fledged character in the novel? What happens when they’re the protagonist?
“The reader is reminded that they are a voyeur, a passive participant–they can only watch and observe.”
Charactered ‘I’ and Charactered ‘You’
Second-person narrative is loosely defined as texts which either address the reader directly or employ a narrative ‘you’. Where, in the previous two examples the addressee has been the reader, the ‘charactered I’ version of second-person shifts the addressee to another character in the book. Caroline Kepnes employs this tactic in her novel You:
You walk into the book store and you keep your hand on the door to make sure it doesn’t slam … You are classic and compact, my own little Natalie Portman circa the movie Closer, when she’s fresh-faced and done with the bad British boys and going home to America. You’ve come home to me, delivered at last, on a Tuesday, 10:06 A.M.
There are two character-roles in play here: the protagonist Joe (the I), and the woman he is speaking to Beck (the you). Kepnes maintains these character roles throughout the novel. Her use of second person is persistent and undeniable. It is possible though, that her use of first person is also undeniable. Kepnes’s character Joe is the voice behind the I but is also the protagonist of the novel and the you he speaks to is not the reader, but another character. The shift in the addressee here pushes—more firmly than authorial intrusion does—the reader out of the narrative. Kepnes’s protagonist Joe turns his back to us, and as readers we are left to look on him in the same way he looks on Beck. Hearing Joe’s perspective on Beck brings this narrative full circle. The reader is allowed this insight where Beck is not, and the reader becomes the omniscient observer. While the reader is moved into a passive space, they are still encouraged to associate themselves with Joe as the I. The second-person narrative also forces the reader to imagine themselves as Beck; they are the watcher and the watched. This shifting and turning of roles indicates a different sort of second-person narrative; a first-, second-, third-person cocktail.
Kepnes’s narration doesn’t allow, as other second-person narratives do, the reader to be placed in a synergised me-and-you narrative. The reader instead feels as if they were the protagonist, something Rembowska associates with first-person narrative.
Then consider Iain S Thomas’s (pleasefindthis) project I Wrote This For You and its use of second person and first person:
And then my soul saw you and it kind of went ‘Oh there you are. I’ve been looking for you.’
Thomas shifts between a pointed or charactered you (directed at a person) and a theoretical or hypothetical you (how-to narrative). On his Goodreads page, a reader asks Thomas who the you in I Wrote This For You is. Thomas’s answer is as follows:
The subject changes. At one point, it was a series of current then ex-girlfriends. Sometimes, it’s my wife. But most often, I'm writing to myself, telling myself the things I’d want to hear if I could step outside myself and give myself some perspective.
In this way, Thomas’s work is functioning as Peter Bibby calls it, ‘a counterfeit first person’ and also as what I would call a ‘charactered I and a charactered you’. Both You and I Wrote This For You are examples of second-person narratives that stray outside of, and subsequently challenge traditional second-person modes.
To attempt to reconcile these discrepancies and inconsistencies, we should look at how we came to define and delineate the three modes of narrative.
In researching this primer, I found second person to be largely a source of confusion and due to this confusion, avoidance. When used properly and with careful consideration, second person can work with the reader in a way that the other two modes cannot. On the surface, in novels like You, it appears that the boundaries between first and second person are blurred. And in a sense, they are. Maybe it is not that the boundaries are collapsing, but they were never properly defined in the first place. Second-person narrative is decidedly difficult to define; its definitions are constantly shifting. It also doesn’t fit the stable models of narrative agency. Many articles on second person avoid pinning down a definition and instead use case studies as examples. Some critics interpret second-person narrative as being a disguised third-person. Roland Barthes denied claims of second-person narrative as being an avant-garde variation on the traditional novel’s third person, instead saying it is more literally the creator addressing the ‘createe’. In some ways, neither are entirely wrong. Second-person narrative contains threads from both first and second person: the writing from a perspective, the characterised point of view and the omniscient narrator.
Maybe the tensions and resistance to second person come not from its experimental form but from the attempts to define it. The boundaries of narrative modes are so strict there is little room to move. In the way that experimental fiction challenges the way we define traditional fiction narratives, we may see a new wave of experimental perspective narratives that challenge how we describe first-, second- and third- person texts. There will always be people who need to define what a work is, or what it’s doing, but maybe we can learn to let go of some of these urges and be satisfied with a text standing alone, whatever form it may be.
Or perhaps the three definitions I’ve outlined here will shift away from being defined as second person but will function within first- or third-person modes. It is further possible that novels like You signify this shift. You is labelled as a ‘stomach-churning second-person narrative.’ Elle Ceron however, then goes on to say that Joe attempts to ‘convince you that everything he does is all for you’. This ‘speaking to you’ seems to break down the boundaries between first- and second- person modes; he is simultaneously speaking to Beck and to you, the reader. In splitting the audience with Joe’s narration, and in the first person of Joe’s inner monologue, Kepnes’s novel seems to challenge these prescribed definitions of narrative modes. Can Kepnes’s novel be defined as a first-person narrative that employs second-person techniques—or vice versa? Can we start to make allowances for these kinds of blends and shifts?
Maybe our need to define and pigeonhole everything is holding us back from shifting literary theory into a new space. We are outgrowing these clothes and they need to be replaced or repaired. Novels written in second person are called difficult or slippery. But it is possible that the problem is not that we cannot grasp what they’re trying to tell us, but that we are even attempting to grasp them at all. This ‘slipperiness’— like a fish sliding out of a fisherman’s hand—is not only our attempts to label it, but also the shimmering, transience of the mode itself. How can you catch something when you don’t know what exactly it is?
