Know It All Narration

An analysis of the third person omniscient narrative in Holly Goldberg Sloan's I'll Be There

By Shannon J.

The omniscient narration involves writing from the perspective of a godlike entity. The narrator essentially knows and perceives everything, and is able to see into everyone's mind. The omniscient narrator tells the story objectively and can change his point of view or focus from place to place, from character to character. In the novel I'll Be There, Sloan attempts to use a third person omniscient narration, but I would not say she succeeded. Especially in the beginning of the novel, switching from each character's point of view became very confusing. It took many chapters for me to finally understand which character was which. The characters were all introduced too quickly. The author describes their feelings, but does not delve into their physical characteristics, which is surprising for a third person narrative.

Although the third person omniscient narrative made the beginning of the novel very confusing, it helped fill in some blanks in the middle of the novel. Having a "know it all" type narration, there is little room for the reader to make their own assumptions. The novel simply tells. It does not give the reader a chance to search for clues throughout the narration to answer any questions that they might have. For example, at one point the narrator says, "He didn't give a rat's ass how the boys looked nowadays..." (Sloan 135). The reader could have easily figured that out themselves by the context of the rest of the book. Clarence, the person that the narrator was talking about above, had always mistreated them and kept them dirty, so the author did not need to go into Clarence's head at that point.

Using a third person omniscient narrative mode also limited the dialogue in this particular novel. Sometimes it is interesting to read dialogue and see what each character has to say. Sloan often uses the omniscient narration to summarize what was said, rather than presenting the whole conversation. By summarizing the dialogue, she makes it hard to look into each character's words and divulge what they are thinking.  For example, Sloan wrote, "Emily had to tell him to back off, to go slow. Emily had to tell her dad that he was overwhelming the situation", instead of presenting the dialogue. This disallows the reader to see her father's reaction, or to see if he easily rather than thinking she was completely wrong.  

I do not think the use of a third person omniscient narration worked well for this novel. I believe 

it made many parts of the text confusing and made it hard for the reader to create their own thoughts 

on the events occurring throughout the novel. I think Sloan should have presented the story as an 

outsider rather than a god-like figure.