Omniscient narration: The fellowship of the ring

I looked at the first chapter quite closely: it starts off by setting the scene, of course, and it’s useful to see how that’s done, how the narrator zooms in and out in time and space. How does one transition from a close, detailed scene to a quicker progression of time? I think this is something I’ve struggled with in the past, although my latest multi-chapter fic spanned a period of nearly ten years and was a bit more successful at it.

When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

Bilbo is the subject here but not the focaliser; our perspective here seems to be that of “the hobbits” in general. Bilbo is outside this, maybe because he’s an unusual person? Nobody really understands him and so we’re not allowed to either.

Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar,

This is unmistakeably outsider POV.

Time wore on, but it seemed to have little effect on Mr. Baggins. At ninety he was much the same as at fifty. At ninety-nine they began to call him well-preserved, but unchanged would have been nearer the mark. There were some that shook their heads and thought this was too much of a good thing; it seemed unfair that anyone should possess (apparently) perpetual youth as well as (reputedly) inexhaustible wealth.

That “they” refers to our focalisers here. We don’t even know who they are, but we’re perceiving the situation through their eyes.

The eldest of these, and Bilbo’s favourite, was young Frodo Baggins. When Bilbo was ninety-nine, he adopted Frodo as his heir, and brought him to live at Bag End; and the hopes of the Sackville-Bagginses were finally dashed. Bilbo and Frodo happened to have the same birthday, September 22nd. ‘You had better come and live here, Frodo my lad,’ said Bilbo one day; ‘and then we can celebrate our birthday-parties comfortably together.’

This is perhaps more from Bilbo’s specific POV? The switch to first names alludes to that (a technique that some of us unfortunately can’t exploit …). We have had some use of Bilbo’s first name in the more outsider-POV-focused section (see above), but in this paragraph, where we’re more inside his head, there is no use of “Mr Baggins” at all. There is still a sense of an intermediary narrator helping us along, though: Frodo is introduced as “young Frodo Baggins” to give us a bit of context about who he is.

In terms of time: that “said Bilbo one day” is the quickest of dips into a specific moment. It’s not even set apart from the rest in terms of paragraphing: it’s just part of the overall scene-setting.

Tongues began to wag in Hobbiton and Bywater; and rumour of the coming event travelled all over the Shire. The history and character of Mr. Bilbo Baggins became once again the chief topic of conversation; and the older folk suddenly found their reminiscences in welcome demand.

Now that we’re switching back to the outsider POV, we’re back to “Mr. Bilbo Baggins” again.

‘A very nice well-spoken gentlehobbit is Mr. Bilbo, as I’ve always said,’ the Gaffer declared. With perfect truth: for Bilbo was very polite to him, calling him ‘Master Hamfast’, and consulting him constantly upon the growing of vegetables – in the matter of ‘roots’, especially potatoes, the Gaffer was recognized as the leading authority by all in the neighbourhood (including himself).

“Perfect truth” from the Gaffer’s perspective: he is being honest, not lying. “Perfect truth” from the nebulous-POV-hobbits: they too believe that Bilbo is nice and well-spoken, and therefore what the Gaffer says must be correct. “Perfect truth” from omniscient narrator’s perspective: this is objectively true in the context of the story. Which? All three?

‘And no wonder they’re queer,’ put in Daddy Twofoot (the Gaffer’s next-door neighbour),

We get a lot of these little parenthetical additions of information, almost as if the narrator is interrupting for a moment to give the audience a bit of information that’s so obvious to the hobbits they don’t even bother thinking about it. It gives the prose a sort of whimsical quality, imo: I assume this will happen less as the text goes on and gets darker.

That was Gandalf’s mark, of course

“Of course” from the hobbits’ perspective: audience being flattered here, assumption that we know what in context is a self-evident truth?

‘Run away now!’ said Gandalf. ‘You will get plenty when the time comes.’ Then he disappeared inside with Bilbo, and the door was shut. The young hobbits stared at the door in vain for a while, and then made off, feeling that the day of the party would never come.

Inside Bag End, Bilbo and Gandalf were sitting at the open window of a small room looking out west on to the garden.

We have a kind of switch in focus here: it’s the perspective of “the young hobbits” in paragraph one, and then moves very abruptly to Bilbo and Gandalf (although not necessarily from their POV) at the beginning of paragraph 2. This is signalled by a quick, no-nonsense shift of location, and we have timeskips that do the next thing: e.g. starting a paragraph with “the next day”. Again, the prose here consists of quick dips into more detailed description, and then we zoom out again to progress to the next significant event in the story. This first chapter covers a number of days (weeks?), so again, I imagine there’ll be less of this later on.

Again … there are a lot of brackets in this!! Often for giving information, on a sort of need-to-know basis. There isn’t a huge amount of exposition in this chapter, although there is of course the lengthy prologue beforehand. If that wasn’t there, I assume there might be a bit more handholding about the details of the world in chapter 1 itself, although it still has to be constructed so a reader can jump in without reading the prologue, because I think it’s reasonable to assume that a lot of people would skip it.

Bilbo’s speech is decidedly not from his POV. Of course – this would ruin the surprise of his disappearance. Likewise, the conversation between Gandalf and Bilbo is pretty detached (evidence below) – we don’t have access to what either of them is thinking. Is this again because they are both sort of eminent grand old man characters, too mysterious and full of arcane knowledge to work as focalisers? If we had access to their thoughts, would that be too much of a spoiler?

Gandalf looked curiously and closely at him.

So this isn’t “this is how Gandalf is feeling right now, he feels curious”, but rather “from the outside, Gandalf appears to be curious”. Feelings/thoughts are hinted at here by adverbs and actions, not by direct access to the characters’ thoughts; see also:

‘In an envelope, if you must know,’ said Bilbo impatiently. ‘There on the mantelpiece. Well, no! Here it is in my pocket!’ He hesitated. ‘Isn’t that odd now?’ he said softly to himself. ‘Yet after all, why not? Why shouldn’t it stay there?’

The wizard’s face remained grave and attentive, and only a flicker in his deep eyes showed that he was startled and indeed alarmed.

Presumably, then, those adverbs and physical descriptions are necessary to allow us to come to conclusions about the characters’ thoughts at this point.

As master of Bag End Frodo felt it his painful duty to say good-bye to the guests.

So we get direct access to Frodo’s thoughts here: he is a younger character, a more suitable focaliser, kind of clean slatey in comparison with Bilbo and Gandalf. In his subsequent conversation with Gandalf, though, we don’t have access to his thoughts: we’re back to adverbs and physical descriptions.

Skipping ahead …

I looked at this section because it’s the introduction of a new ally who we don’t initially recognise as one. A lot of this section is unequivocally from Frodo’s POV: we can’t have access to Aragorn as he is an unknown quantity so far, so again, knowing his thoughts would be a spoiler. After he’s established as an ally, though, he is able to take the role of focalising character when we need him to:

Strider immediately went to fetch the landlord. Poor Mr. Butterbur looked sleepy and frightened. He had hardly closed his eyes all night (so he said), but he had never heard a sound.

We have no access to Mr Butterbur’s mind here – the “so he said” is proof of this. But we seem to be experiencing the scene through Aragorn.

Strider sat silent for a while, looking at the hobbits, as if he was weighing up their strength and courage. // ’Ponies would not help us to escape horsemen,’ he said at last, thoughtfully, as if he guessed what Frodo had in mind.

We don’t get access to Aragorn’s mind here – because the hobbits are also with us, and they take priority? We seem to have access to all of them as required:

’As much as we must,’ said Pippin with a sinking heart, but trying to show that he was tougher than he looked (or felt).

Again, there’s a lot of use of “they” in this section, and that seems to encompass the entire group of hobbits. A lot of the time we are seeing things from their collective POV: sometimes the POV narrows briefly to one of them, most often Frodo, and apparently least often Sam at this point, because he’s not posh like the others, I guess.

The hobbits gazed at Strider. It seemed that he was learned in old lore, as well as in the ways of the wild. ’Who was Gil-galad?’ asked Merry; but Strider did not answer, and seemed to be lost in thought. Suddenly a low voice murmured:

[poem goes here]

The others turned in amazement, for the voice was Sam’s.

We have access to all the hobbits here, but the narrator is hiding some of the information from us until after the (quite lengthy) poem. Presumably (although not definitely?) the hobbits know it’s Sam speaking from the beginning, so we’re held in suspense, just for a brief moment.

So if someone is an ally, part of the group, we have access to their mind when convenient, notwithstanding a sort of hierarchy that seems to go from Frodo via the other hobbits to non-hobbit characters. Despite that, a lot of the time our POV is with the whole group, or, I guess, the majority experience, as in the following:

Sam muttered something inaudible.

Frodo seems to be cemented as the main POV character; we often see him from outside, though:

Pippin’s face brightened visibly at the mere mention of return to Rivendell; Merry and Sam looked up hopefully. But Aragorn and Boromir made no sign. Frodo looked troubled.

At this, point, we’re like another person at the meeting. Nobody’s experience is prioritised over anyone else’s. And when Frodo is incapacitated, it’s normally in this detached style, although again, we get the odd action narrated through the eyes of one of the other characters.

Other irrelevant observations: Frodo gets whumped a lot. Sam’s loyalty to him is … very relevant to my interests?? Sam “was not disposed to be quick friends with anyone who had beaten his master” – yikes, there really is a ship dynamic I’m into and it’s this one.