First-Person Peripheral Narrator: Difference between revisions

* The so-called "protagonist" of the book version of ''[[The Island of Doctor Moreau]]'' does nothing but get thrown overboard, land on an island and watch more interesting people do experiments; Moreau and his experiments are the actual protagonists.

** The various film versions tend to give him a more active role, sometimes as Moreau's final experiment (and success)

** Even more weirdly in the same novel, by Isabella, who writes a note about her time with Heathcliff later found by Nelly and recited from memory to Lockwood. Also, the contents of the entire novel are really Lockwood's diary. That's right -- the reader reads a diary of a man who faithfully records lengthy monologues by a character who in turn faithfully relates a pages-long letter she herself read years ago. [[Lampshade Hanging]]?

** Originally Carrot was going to be the viewpoint character, but then Pratchett decided it would be more interesting to leave his thoughts out of the narrative, and shifted the viewpoint to Vimes. This ended up having [[Ensemble Darkhorse|very interesting results]]. In fact, in the entire series, there is exactly one page written from Carrot's point of view, even if the story is revolving around him. Sometimes the book spends some time on other characters' thoughts on what Carrot is thinking, because he's like a well: both extremely simple, and extremely deep.

* ''[[The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde]]'': Utterson

* Robert Graves' historical novel, ''Count Belisarius'' is narrated by a servant of Belisarius' wife.

** ''Herbert West Reanimator'', ''The Dreams in the Witch House'' and ''The Thing on the Doorstep'' are noteworthy examples.

** She used a [[First-Person Peripheral Narrator]] again in ''The Clocks'', albeit with a one-time character.

** Also the vicar in ''Murder at the Vicarage'', where one of the three superficially similar, gossiping old ladies in the congregation solved the case. [[Miss Marple]] had a few other [[First-Person Peripheral Narrator|First Person Peripheral Narrators]] over her career.

* The ''[[Horrible Harry]]'' series of books are narrated by the main character's best friend, Doug, who acts as a foil to a lot of the characters.

* Subverted in the first ''[[Arsène Lupin]]'' story. It begins as a very traditional example of a mystery story using this trope, where a nondescript male narrator is describing Lupin {{spoiler|he is actually Lupin himself, and has been spreading to the police inaccurate descriptions of his appearance}}.

* The nameless sailor listening to Marlowe tell the story of Kurtz in Conrad's ''[[Heart of Darkness]]''. Marlowe himself is also (arguably) an example, as his main role is just to witness Kurtz.

*** Notice how, even in her final appearance, she dances around the perennial question: whether she had sex with Emperor Palpatine (a question that sheds quite a bit of light on her mentality). If she had head time, the author would've had to spill the beans.

* ''[[Fried Green Tomatoes|Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe]]'' and its film version (simply called ''Fried Green Tomatoes'') has two perspectives; a woman at a nursing home, and the old lady who tells the woman her story. The old lady's stories are mostly about her adoptive sister and her relationship with another girl.

** Similarly, his short story ''[[The Door In The Wall]]'' is told by someone who's friend is seeking the titular door.

* Professor Arronax from [[Jules Verne]] novel ''[[Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea]]''. He is placed in the position of the [[First-Person Peripheral Narrator]] against his will by the main character (Captain Nemo) and escapes in the end.

* ''The Mad Scientist's Club'' by Bertrand R. Brinley; Charlie serves as the narrator, while Henry Mulligan serves as the protagonist.

* Captain [[Alatriste]]'s squire Íñigo de Balboa, although Íñigo sometimes furthers some plots himself.

* Verbal Kint in ''The Usual Suspects'' has exactly this relationship to Kaiser Sozye...but there's more to it.

* Susie, the narrator of ''[[The Lovely Bones]]'', is dead and in heaven. Most of the book is her following her friends and family as they deal with her death and move on, as well as the man who raped and killed her.

* All four narrators of ''[[The Sound and The Fury]]'' are intended to be this, as William Faulkner always said the book was really about Caddy. However, it's an unusual example of this trope because Caddy's barely there to be seen even through the eyes of the other characters -- it's mostly about the impact her actions have had on the family.

* Patrick, the nephew/narrator in ''[[Auntie Mame]]''.

{{quote| Because what I am trying to tell you...<br />

What I have been trying to tell you all along is simply that my father, without the slightest doubt, was the most marvelous and exciting father any boy ever had. }}

* Fanny, the narrator of [[Nancy Mitford]]'s ''[[Love In A Cold Climate]]'' and ''The Pursuit of Love'' tells the stories of Linda, Polly and Cedric and only mentions concurrent events in her own life - such as her marriage and the birth of her children - in passing.

* Damien Vryce is the main viewpoint character of the ''[[Coldfire Trilogy|Coldfire]]'' trilogy, but for much of the series he functions as the [[First-Person Peripheral Narrator]] to [[Magnificent Bastard|The Hunter]]/{{spoiler|[[Fallen Hero|Garald Tarrant]]}}.

* Phineas is the [[First-Person Peripheral Narrator]] in ''John Halifax, Gentleman'', a Victorian novel by Dinah Craik.

* In ''[[The Master Of Ballantrae]]'', the story is told after all the important characters are dead by Mr. McKellar, the steward of the Durrisdeer estate, because he wants to set the record straight and clear the reputation of the late Lord Durrisdeer. McKelllar narrates the events he was present at in the first person, and his actions have some influence on the course of events, but he's not central.

* Tim Wynne Jones' short story [http://www.hapon.com/9pdf/kerdydickussty.pdf ''Save The Moon For Kerdy Dickus''] begins with the line "This is Ky's story." -- Ky being a friend of the young narrator, and her story being about a Stranger who came to Ky's family's house one evening {{spoiler|and thought that they were aliens}}. The friend telling the story was not there for the main events of the story at all. The [[First-Person Peripheral Narrator]] perspective is effective here because, as the narrator says flat out in the first paragraph, "In this story, the way things look is really important," and the fact that the narrator is neither as familiar with those things as Ky nor as unfamiliar with them as the Stranger emphasizes the fact that this story is all about the perspective from which it's told.

* Just about all of H.G. Wells' books, including the above-mentioned ''Island of Dr. Moreau'' and ''The Time Machine,'' fall prey to this. Perhaps the only novel to avert this is ''[[The War of the Worlds]],'' where the unnamed narrator is the protagonist by default because no other major characters last for more than a handful of chapters or have any real motives or character development.

* ''[[To Kill a Mockingbird]]'' has Scout watching her father's heroic attempt to save Tom Robinson's life. Scout does have her own adventures, but Atticus is the real man of action.

* ''[[Horatio Hornblower|Lieutenant Hornblower]]'' is told from the perspective of one of Hornblower's superior officers, starting with a poor first impression, and proceeding with the increasing awareness of the fact that Hornblower is [[The Chessmaster|manipulating him into basically following Hornblower's plan.]] He goes along with it because Hornblower tends to have very good ideas. Of course, the primary reason for this [[First-Person Peripheral Narrator]] setup (''Lieutenant'' is the only book in the series to do this) is because a central plot of the book is a mystery about their unstable captain who was injured and put into a coma under [[Cut Himself Shaving|suspicious circumstances]], the only witnesses being Hornblower and a midshipman, [[The Dog Bites Back|both of whom suffered abuse at the Captain's hands]].

* One of the popular criticisms of ''[[The Tenant of Wildfell Hall]]'' is that the [[Framing Device|frame]] narrator Gilbert Markham should be this trope, but [[Subverted Trope|instead]], he eventually becomes the protagonist Helen's love interest. Note Gilbert was created by the sister of Lockwood's creator.

* ''Conrad's Fate'' of the [[Chrestomanci]] series by [[Diana Wynne Jones]] is mostly about Christopher. Since he is older than in ''The Lives of Christopher Chant'' but younger than he is in the rest of the series, we get to see him be a bit reckless and mess up. Diana hadn't really had much of a chance to explain the mysterious Chrestomanci's thought processes to her readers until then. Conrad himself doesn't do very much more than observe how awesome Christopher is.

* In [[Gene Wolfe]]'s ''Book of the Long Sun, Silk is the protagonist but two of his pupils, Horn and Nettle, turn out to be the narrators.

* Barbara Robinson's three ''<s>Worst</s> Best'' novels (most famously ''The Best Christmas Pageant Ever'') are all about the Herdmans, a group of misbehaved siblings with a difficult home life, as they interact with their town's other children. The books are narrated by a girl in their class, however, who relates information about the family and the children's various antics as the plot of each book unfolds.

* Gil Abad in the Spanish novel series ''Marijuli & Gil Abad''. Despite being one of the titular characters, he's a [[The Watson|Watson]] at best. The (few) chapters that aren't written under his point of view are all in a different font, to make this tope even more obvious.

* Jim Burden, in ''[[My Antonia]]'', has touches of this. His narration speaks mostly of the fascinating people around him than of his own life, though it is clear from some throwaway lines near the end of the book that he has had an interesting one.

* Dunstan, the narrator of ''[[Fifth Business]]'', could be considered this. He himself doesn't really do much, but the accompanying stories of Percy and Paul detail a story of revenge that takes sixty years to conclude. The title even references this; "fifth business" is a stage term meaning that one character who has no real part to play in the story except for the fact that they know a game breaking fact about the main character.

* ''[[The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'': her name is stamped on the product and her face is everywhere in the opening, closing, and promotional material, but the story is told from the point of view of [[Unreliable Narrator]] Kyon.

* Einar after the prologue in ''[[Vinland Saga]]''.

* Tylor in ''[[The Irresponsible Captain Tylor]]'' is inscrutable, as no one can tell whether he's a lucky idiot or a [[Obfuscating Stupidity|genius.]] Yuriko and Yamamoto tend to be the viewpoint characters.

* For the first few eps. of ''[[Trigun]]'' we mostly see Vash from Meryl's point of view, and don't even get confirmation he is Vash for some time. This doesn't last- we get very deep in Vash's psyche by the end.

* Simon takes this role in the first third of ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'', up until {{spoiler|Kamina dies}}. In this case, however, it's not a viewpoint shift, but the viewpoint character becoming the protagonist as he comes into his own.

* Souryo Fuyumi's manga ''Cesare'' is about a sixteen-year-old Cesare Borgia, his servant Miguel, and the games of [[Xanatos Speed Chess]] the two are playing with various historical figures. It's actually told by Angelo, some kid who's at school with them (readers usually ''hate'' Angelo, which may or may not be intentional). This is one of those uses where it starts to seem like the Ishmael is a little [[Ho Yay|too fascinated]], though this too may be deliberate.

** Subverted in ''The Rolling Bootlegs'': while it appears that Maiza relating the story about his friend and subordinate Firo to a Japanese tourist, {{spoiler|it's actually [[Actually, I Am Him|Firo himself]] telling the tale, and the tourist just assumed otherwise because Firo never properly introduced himself and was wearing glasses like Maiza's.}}

* Sakuno Ryuzaki, and the Freshmen Trio from ''[[Prince of Tennis]]'' (at least initially). Ryoma Echizen's undeniably the focus of the story, but his personality and development are mostly viewed through other characters due to his aloof nature.

* Evey Hammond in ''[[V for Vendetta]]'' - V is certainly the lead character, but the story follows Evey as exposure to V changes her.

* [[Unfortunate Names|Sexton Furnival]] in ''[[The Sandman|Death: The High Cost of Living]]''. Death/Didi is the axis around which the story revolves, with Sexton just having been dragged in after her. But he's the one with real [[Character Development]]; hanging out with Death for the day renews his interest in living, rather than committing suicide out of sheer ennui like he wanted to do at the beginning.

* Johnny Frost in the graphic novel ''Joker'', who follows around the title character for a while. Funny thing is {{spoiler|he dies at the end going against what an [[First-Person Peripheral Narrator]] is.}}

 

* Paco (Edward James Olmos) in ''[[My Family Mi Familia]]'', who spends most of the film in the Navy.

* Red from ''[[The Shawshank Redemption]]''.

* The hospitalized old lady with the diary in ''[[The Curious Case of Benjamin Button]]''. (She turns out to be {{spoiler|Benjamin's love interest from long ago}}, but Benjamin is the main character, of course.)

* Mr. Hundert in ''The Emperor's Club'' -- he's the narrator and gets quite a bit of character development in his own scenes, but he spends more time observing Sedgewick Bell than doing anything else.

* Kim and Peg in ''[[Edward Scissorhands]]''.

* Walter in ''[[Secondhand Lions]]'' and Uncle Garth in some of the in-film stories about his adventures with Uncle Hub.

== Video Games ==

 

** Well, minus ...{{spoiler|Vainly attempting to stop Lavos from killing all his friends [[And Zoidberg|and Magus]] and dying in a [[Heroic Sacrifice]]}}. That scene alone basically gives him some kind of characterization even if he's Silent, not unlike the Persona [[M Cs]].

** When you consider that Link was originally just supposed to be a stand-in for the player (which is to say, being the player's '[[Meaningful Name|link]]' to the game), this isn't really so surprising.

* Raiden in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 2'': creator [[Hideo Kojima]] has stated that Solid Snake still was the real main character of the game.

* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'' where Vaan himself admits he's "just along for the ride." (though he is the main character of the story in the [[Spin-Off]] ''[[Revenant Wings]]'').

* Subverted in ''[[Infinite Undiscovery]]'', in which the main character, Capell, is a dead-ringer for the hero Sigmund, and mostly tags along for the first third of the game. {{spoiler|Then Sigmund dies, and Capell spends most of the rest of the game impersonating him and doing his job for him. Then you discover that Capell is Sigmund's son, whose birth set most of the plot off. In the end, Capell turns out to be as relevant, if not moreso, than Sigmund to the plot as a whole}}.

* In the [[Ghostbusters]] videogame, you control one unnamed character - but you don't get (almost) any lines, and it's the four movie Busters that are the real stars. They do treat you like an equal later on.

* In ''[[Phantom Brave]]'', the real protagonist is Marona, as is immediately obvious... but the primary viewpoint character, and the one you control during downtime is her companion Ash. At least part of this is that Marona is too naive and too [[The Messiah|ready to love everything and everyone]] for her to provide an accurate perspective on what's happening and the prejudices she faces.

** And ''[[Makai Kingdom]]'', by the same people, takes this even farther -- the protagonist, Overlord Zetta, would be no fun to play as he spends most of the game as an immobile book... so it puts you in control of his head underling, who does the work, but has no actual role in the story -- in fact, the underling is just another generic created PC that can be switched out at will.

* In ''[[Halo]] 3: ODST'', the primary player character is the [[The Voiceless|mute,]] [[He Who Must Not Be Seen|faceless]] Rookie. For the flashback missions, you take control of his different squadmates, and the real stars of the story are your CO, Gunnery Sgt. Buck, and Veronica Dare.

** He does become the main character by the end of the game though, when he catches up with the events that happened over the last 6 hours.

* The ending to ''[[Valkyria Chronicles]]'' reveals that the whole thing has essentially been the scrapbook of Elle, a (somewhat annoying) journalist who had made it her mission to document Squad 7's adventures.

* The narrator of [[Narcissu]], who is not even given a name in-game, largely serves as a chauffeur and plot-catalyst for the real focus of the story, Setsumi. {{spoiler|Justified by reason #1 above.}} Setsumi herself fits this role to some degree vis-a-vis Himeko in the prequel, but she does at least get quite a bit of character development.

* This is probably what Milanor of ''[[Yggdra Union]]'' was intended to be, but because Yggdra winds up being the viewpoint character of most of the game (right down to our getting her internal monologues), he just winds up being a rather useless side character [[Creator's Pet|who gets a disproportionate amount of lines]] for someone who's not all that important.

** Then Yggdra gets kidnapped. [[Ascended Extra|Who will be the one]] [[Knight in Shining Armor|that lead the team to rescue her?]] That's probably the only time the player's playing Milanor as a full time hero.

 

== Theater ==

== Webcomics ==

 

 

== Western Animation ==

* Pvt. Robert "Paperboy" Higgins from ''[[Starship Troopers|Roughnecks: Starship Trooper Chronicles]]'' is a FedNet reporter, basically embedded with the Mobile Infantry (except he's an enlisted man, not a non-combatant). Most of the show's narration is him speaking in the past tense, as though writing his memoirs, and he states in the first episode, regarding his comrade and the obvious male lead [[One-Man Army|Johnny Rico]], "I know he doesn't look like much now, but trust me, this guy's gonna be a legend."

* The Narrator (a pudgy snowman) in the famous Rankin/Bass animated adaptation of ''Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer''. Apparently, his only ''raison d'etre'' besides telling the audience the story is to sing and perform on the guitar songs that are only tangentially related to the plot. The story's ''real'' protagonist, of course, is Rudolph - but since we are viewing ''everything'' through the Narrator's perspective, Herbie the Elf and the Misfit Toys also are depicted as well-rounded characters, and arguably alternate protagonists themselves.

 

{{reflist}}