(Experimental Essay): Privilege of the Witness in Narratology

Sometimes, from my stream of consciousness, an idea will roil up from the depths that compels me to jot it down, usually in a half-formed iPhone Note that I won’t revisit for stretches at a time. Once I do, I usually discover that it has either a) expired in relevance, or b) incubated some insight, maybe one worth posting. Tonight, sitting down at a cafe open till midnight, searching for something to write about, I was struck by such a note typed last winter with this tagline:

“How does one reconcile the privileged perspective that dramatic irony affords us in a narrative against a limited first-person form of participation?”

It’s a challenging and theoretical question…but I’m up for the exercise of chewing through it critically, hopefully in the effort to land on some worthwhile philosophical implications for the curiosity of the reader as well as myself. So here goes an attempt at unpacking and expanding on what I mean by this so-called “privilege of the witness” (in narratology, not to be confused with the legal term):

Let’s start by familiarizing ourselves with how dramatic irony and limited first-person are typically defined in storytelling. Put plainly, dramatic irony is when the reader is aware of a situation in the story that the main character is not aware of, often employed for humorous or melodramatic effect. A famous example is Romeo believing Juliet is dead, while she is only sleeping from a potion. Limited first-person is a different storytelling device, which uses “I” and where the reader is contained within the main character’s thoughts, beliefs, and subjective point of view, e.g., Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

So what do I mean by the “privilege” of the perspective that dramatic irony affords when reading a story? For one, it could be a feeling that we possess some knowledge about the situation that would help the character in the story resolve their conflict in some way…if only we could impart it to them. This makes it a more or less omniscient perspective, lending some oversight and a nominal privilege of awareness granted to the reader on the author’s behalf.

A dramatic-ironic perspective is contrary to a limited first-person point of view, in which there is no disclosure of extra information, no outside context that allows the reader to “zoom out” from the situation, and so no extra privilege. What’s more, the limited first-person character has greater knowledge than that of the reader about the world they occupy—the reader is only let in on a small segment of the character’s psyche. Accordingly, if we were limited to Romeo’s first-person point of view, we would have full evidence to believe Juliet was dead. By contrast, if Handmaid’s Tale offered more in the way of dramatic irony, we would be able to know things that the main character Offred may not be privy to, i.e., plans made by agents of the government which might interfere with her plot to escape.

Because these two points of view are opposed, it raises the question of how they may be reconciled for us as readers being involved and participating in the story to some degree. I’ve already referenced two texts that represent each point of view separately, but what happens when the two are at odds together over the duration of a whole story?

Take a true crime TV show, for example, one in which we are involved in receiving clues and signs about some mystery, such as in any classic “who donnit?”. Consequently, we become invested in the page-turning, ongoing episodic investigation of the central characters. Now, if one of the characters is themselves an investigator, they search for clues and gather evidence to identify and catch, for instance, a serial killer, much in the same way that we search for clues and gather evidence to form predictions while watching the show. However, it’s important to note that we as the viewer may at some point know more than the investigator in the show if the show reveals some outside information about the killer, such as that he resides in rural Georgia. In other words, we as the viewer may know the killer lives in Georgia via dramatic irony, yet we continue to follow the P.I.’s limited viewpoint as they try and crack the killer’s location using tools like maps and forensics.

Oftentimes, this has the effect of making the P.I. character appear clumsy and hapless, wandering through the dark while we remain tense, unable to shout into the screen, “he’s in Georgia dummy, go to Georgia!” This involves dramatic irony for us as the viewer, whereas for the investigator in the show, who has a limited first-person point of view, we are bound to the P.I.’s thoughts, beliefs, emotions, etc., as the story unfolds.

Thus, the two points of view are at odds; or rather, they are entwined. How can we be involved in the show, that is, how can we participate in the story when we are following both the overarching dramatic irony of a cat-chases-mouse narrative as well as the more immediate subjective, limited first-person experience of the private investigator character? Initially, it feels like an either/or, but is there a way we can reconcile both angles when watching something like true crime? Which of the two perspectives do we assume, and where does that leave our attention?

Bringing these thoughts one layer out, is it possible to examine the question in the light of our own lives? For instance, when we look back in hindsight at our recorded past mistakes (i.e., awkward text, bad photo, regrettable social media post, bad decision, etc.), it’s common to think, “if only I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have done x, and it would have changed everything.” Is this not dramatic irony at play in ordinary life, an omniscient historical view that grants us privileged awareness of the past, knowledge which is impossible to impart retroactively? At the same time, we experience life subjectively—in other words, from a limited first-person point of view, seeing as we can only ever be truly intimate with our own thoughts, beliefs, and emotions. Thus, like a true crime show, our lives are constantly being streamed from both viewpoints at once. I believe that we inherit the privilege of the witness while also participating vis-à-vis with our limited first-person perspective within the story of our lives.

And to that point, they are both reconciled as we live it out. In moments where we feel captured by our own subjectivity, caught up in our emotions, thoughts, and personality, we live as limited first-person characters. However, if we extend this perspective outwards over the shadow of our past, we then preside in the domain of dramatic irony, being aware of our circumstances from a wider field of vision, accepting the privilege of the witness as we shout in vain over the expanse…

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading: you are an absolute champ! These thoughts are experimental and deal with abstract concepts in a way that can be difficult to explain, let alone digest. However, I think it is worth sharing in the hopes that it conveys some insight for the stray and curious mind. If this post indeed stirred you to reflect, feel free to drop a response with your thoughts in the comments below.