Narrative Voice in Old Goriot, Term Paper

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The narrator in Balzac's novel is passing judgments and making comments related to the characters and their environments, in the purest realist style. He is observing and describing as if he was watching them through a huge magnifying glass. His own opinions are less transparent than in the case of Oliver Twists' narrator. He chooses to stay detached and observe and record instead of sympathizing with one or the other.

The author deliberately chooses to superpose his voice over that of the narrator, pointing out that his work is destined to entertain, being a work of ficiton: "You will do the same, - you my reader, now holding this book in your white hand, and saying to yourself in the depths of your easy chair: "I wonder if it will amuse me!" (Pere Goriot, p. 2). On the other hand, even if the characters and the events are fictional, they are the result of putting together small pieces of real characters Balzac has studied in order to be able to speculate on the potential outcome or significance of their lives in the context of the French society in the early nineteenth century.

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Each of the three novels in discussion presents certain common characteristics when it comes to the voice of the narrator. One of them is the occasional use of the first person for passing judgments or expressing personal opinions. Social injustice and prejudice are common subjects in both Balzac's and Dickens' novels while class prejudice is also a secondary theme in Proust's novel. The styles are different, depending on what literary and philosophical tendencies influenced the respective author, thus the option for favouring a narrative voice or another differ accordingly.

Balzac, Honore de. Pere Goriot. Comedy of Human Life. Roberts brothers, 1886

Proust, Marcel. Swann's….....

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