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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Origin of dramatic use of from the grave narrative voices

Benny the Ball

07:44 / 02.05.05

I'm reading Bleak House at the moment (and haven't finished it so there is no spoiler in this) and there is a moment where one of the narrative voices falls ill. As I read on I knew that the owner of that voice wouldn't die because of her past-tense nature, however, in thinking this I wondered what was the origin of the from-the-grave narrative voice which seems to be a common dramatic technique of late - in particularly in film?

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:33 / 02.05.05

Dude, if it's in particular in film you might have more luck in the film forum. In film... well, Sunset Boulevard had a posthumous narrator in 1950, but there's never any doubt that he is dead.

Whisky Priestess

10:34 / 02.05.05

Well, I don't want to spoil the end for you, but I was genuinely surprised when I reached the last page of All Quiet on the Western Front: it's a first-person narrative, and as as the narrator's friends get killed, you reflect on the fact that there's less tension because you know he survived and is telling the story ... and then the narrative suddenly shifts to third person with the discovery of his body, shot dead in the final weeks of WW1. No "these pages were taken from his diary", no nothing. Very effective and quite shocking, actually.

I can't recommend the book (author Erich Maria Remarque, Brian Murdoch Vintage translation) highly enough.

sleazenation

12:21 / 02.05.05

On the Esther Summerson front... I'm not sure if you are reading a version carrying the original illustrations (modern editions seem intent on excluding them which is a great shame) but its interesting to note that before her illness leaves her face hideously scarred Esther Summerson is drawn from the front - after the illness she is only ever drawn from behind or with her face obscured...

Alex's Grandma

13:30 / 02.05.05

In Glamourama by Brett Easton Ellis, to what extent is Victor telling his story from some sort of Tibetan Bardo perspective ?

I'm guessing that the minute Alison sets her dogs on him he's lost, but I could be wrong.

It'd be interesting to speculate, certainly, as to why the 'dead' narrator seems to be such a vibrant cultural meme* at the moment. Is there a creeping sense in the zeitgeist** that life as it's being lived by the poster kids of this generation is not really living, as such ? Or not really ?

* don't worry, I'll kill myself later.

** as above

Benny the Ball

17:04 / 02.05.05

Sleazenation, it does have the illustrations, and yes, the Esther pictures are now in bonnet and obscured mode.

Haus, I was more interested in the origin in literature as I was thinking about how much of a shock it must have been when first used.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

19:19 / 03.05.05

There's also Beckett's prose works, the Texts for Nothing - where the narrators were all dead. If I remember right.

at the scarwash

00:23 / 04.05.05

Well, he's not really dead, but Coleridge's ancient mariner seems to have had an influence on that style of narration.

grant

19:09 / 04.05.05

Actually, I think the epistolary form probably has examples going back further -- I can't remember if any of the letter-writers in Dracula kick the bucket after their chapters are up, but I'm pretty sure some of Poe's first person "M.S. in a Bottle"-style heroes are assumed to be dead after their stories are done.

Not sure if that counts as quite the same thing, but it's similar.

Totem Polish

22:00 / 10.05.05

William Faulkner does it a bit in 'As I lay Dying' more to underly the bleak irony of the novel I guess. The most removed (permanently) of the family is most perceptive of their foibles and in some ways most wilful, like with her burial request etc. Not that it all comes to any good, as you would expect with one of the main characters dead I suppose. Does anyone know of a book with a from-the-grave narrative that has what you might call a happy ending?

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