Child Narrator

Extremely Young  Incredibly Wise:
The Function of Child Narrators in Adult Fiction



Acknowledgments



I would like to express my thanks and wholehearted appreciation to my
supervisor, Professor Justin Edwards, for his useful support and continued
guidance during the dissertation research.
My special thanks go to my family and friends for their sustained encouragement
and incessant patience during the writing of this thesis.

Author Declarations



I hereby declare that the present work is the result of my own individual research
and effort and that I have written it myself. The material included in this
dissertation has not been submitted wholly or in part for any academic award or
qualification other than for which it is submitted now. All elements borrowed from
other writers are given their due credit.

Linda STEINMETZ
May 2011

2

Linda STEINMETZ
professeur-‐candidate au
Atert-‐Lycée Redange

Extremely Young  Incredibly Wise:

The Function of Child Narrators in Adult Fiction



Redange, 2011

3

Abstract



The following research focuses on the function of child narrators in adult fiction. My
thesis first defines the notions of ‘narrator,’ child,’ and ‘adult literature:’ what is a
narrator and which types of narrators are there? What are the preconceived ideas
that readers have in mind when they think of child narrators? At what point in time
did adults start to analyze the child’s individual psychology and to define young
people as different from grown-‐ups? And finally, what is an adult and which texts do
we characterize as ‘adult literature?’
Subsequently, I am answering the question why an author would choose a child
as the narrator of his story, rather than an adult. Which literary message can a child
transmit that an adult fails to impart? And finally, which influence does the author
and the reader’s background and prior experience have on the reading process?
In order to answer the foregoing questions, I have discussed two novels in
particular: The Life Before Us, by the French writer Romain Gary and Extremely Loud
and Incredibly Close, by the young American author Jonathan Safran Foer.
Furthermore, my thesis incorporates secondary literature and analyses other critics’
points of view in relation to child narrators, in order to assure an extended outlook
on the discussion at hand.
Finally, my research paper ends with the debate whether there is such a literary
device as a stereotypical child narrator or whether all child narrators differ according
to the author who created them and according to their literary function? Can a child
narrator keep all the characteristics of an average child or does the young narrator
need to lose part of his childlike mannerism in order to render the story meaningful
for an adult reader?
In the end, I would like to highlight that it was a challenge to find secondary
material in relation to my research topic, because the analysis of the child narrator
has only recently become the focus of literary criticism. Moreover, I would like to
point out that the present thesis just makes sense if we see and treat the literary child
figure like a real person. Otherwise, the discussion would remain limited to a purely
hypothetical level.

4

II

I

A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an
axis of innumerable narrations.
Jorge Borges
III

IV

I go straight from thinking
about my narrator to being
him.
S.E. Hinton

V VI

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List of Figures


 Fig. I: 16th Century Children
Ourimages. co.cc: http://ourimages.co.cc/16th-‐century-‐children.html

From the 14th to the end of the 19th century, the children’s clothes closely resembled those
of their parents. In figure I, all three children are wearing headpieces and their clothes are
richly decorated with lace, which makes them look like miniature adults.

 Fig. II: Child Psychology
Nocloo.com: http://www.nocloo.com/gallery2/v/charles-‐robinson-‐secret-‐garden/crobinson-‐
secretgarden07.jpg.html

Figure II shows Mary, the child protagonist of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel The Secret
Garden (1910). The picture captures Mary’s melancholy and introversion and illustrates
the growing emphasis on children’s psychology that begins to emerge at the end of the
Victorian period.

 Fig. III: Children’s Hardship
Hill, Bill. Billhillsblog.com: http://billhillsblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/les-‐miserables-‐would-‐victor-‐
hugo.html

The third figure is an illustration by Emile Bayard. The picture shows the image of Cosette,
the main character in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (1862). Emile Bayard’s drawing
captures the hardship that a great number of lower-‐class children had to endure before
and during the nineteenth century.

 Fig. IV: The 21st Century Child
Commarts. com: http://www.commarts.com/fresh/jay-‐taylor.html

Figure four highlights what life is like for a 21st child. Nowadays, children are constantly
surrounded and influenced by a multitude of impressions on a daily basis.

 Fig. V: The Medieval Child
Dollsfrom the Attic. com: http://dollsfromtheattic.blogspot.com/2010/02/dolls-‐of-‐middle-‐
ages.html

Children’s play in the Middle Ages, and for centuries later, was meant to prepare the young
people for their social roles in later life. Dolls were there to foster the girls’ womanly roles
as mothers and housewives, while boys were encouraged to play with miniature military
toys.

 Fig. VI: The Innately Good Child
Nocloo. com: http://www.nocloo.com/gallery2/v/charles-‐robinson-‐secret-‐garden/crobinson-‐
secretgarden07.jpg.html

Charles Robinson’s illustration shows the romantic idea of the child, who is inherently
good and one with nature.

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Table of Contents


 1. Positive and Emotional Thinking: Introduction .........................................9

1.1. Motives................................................................................................................................................................9
1.2. Research Methodology..............................................................................................................................13

 2. Factual Thinking: Key Definitions..............................................................17
2.1. Narrator and Reader ..................................................................................................................................17
2.2. The Child .........................................................................................................................................................33
2.3. The Child Narrator ......................................................................................................................................45
2.4. Adult Literature............................................................................................................................................55

 3. Critical Thinking: The Child Narrator’s Effect...........................................59

 4. Creative Thinking: Uniqueness and Function of Child Narrators ...........93
4.1. The Life Before Us, by Romain Gary .....................................................................................................99
4.2. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer .................................................. 125

 5. General Thinking: Conclusion .................................................................. 137

 Bibliography .................................................................................................. 143
Primary Reading................................................................................................................................................ 143
Secondary Reading........................................................................................................................................... 143
Cited Works ..........................................................................................................................................................143
Cited Online Sources.........................................................................................................................................145
Included Visual Material ................................................................................................................................146
Additional Reading........................................................................................................................................... 146
Consulted Works ................................................................................................................................................146
Consulted Online Sources ...............................................................................................................................147

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1. Positive and Emotional Thinking: Introduction8
1.1. Motives
It is a common conception that children are our future and that young people need
adult guidance, in order to fully develop their potential. Yet, already two thousand
years ago, the Greek philosopher Socrates has ostensibly argued that children
resist adult control, because children

love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect
for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the
servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room.
They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the
table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.9

Socrates’ view of the young people of his time has gradually developed into cliché
thinking that adults still voice nowadays. The persistence of the stereotypical
concepts mentioned above illustrates that children and the ideal methods of
raising and educating them, in order to secure a promising future, have always
been and invariably remain widely discussed topics. In the 1930s the definition of
the child’s status in society started to emerge more clearly and Phyllis Blanchard
explains that ‘growing recognition of the importance of the early years [was]
indicated by the increasing number of nursery schools and centres for research in
the psychology of the preschool child. […] Both welfare work and research [were]
placing more emphasis upon the social relationships of the child.’10 Consequently,
while the child’s psychology started to capture public attention, there was a
simultaneous movement that was meant to define the child’s development in
relation to his environment and cultural context. Children have become the focus
of psychologists and educators, who analyze the importance of upbringing and the
influence of social background on the child’s development in more detail and in a
more scientifically founded way.

8 In order to avoid the use of awkward pronoun combinations such as ‘he’ or ‘she’ or possessive
adjectives such as ‘his’ or ‘her,’ I am consistently using ‘he’ to refer to any person or character in
this thesis. This decision is purely motivated by practical, as well as stylistic concerns, and does not
carry any hidden socio-‐political message.
9 Koth, Amit. “Socrates.” Quotationsbook.com:
http://quotationsbook.com/quote/44998/#ixzz1K9ef61bh.
10 Blanchard, Phyllis. “Status of the Child.” The American Journal of Sociology 35.6 (May 1930):
1085-‐1090, 1085.
9

In literature, since writing generally reflects the circumstances of its time,

the trend of focusing on the adolescent has also found adherents. In contrast to
scientific research though, the authors of books that focus on a child’s point of view
only outline the relationship between child and adult and leave the interpretation
of the child’s attitude and behaviour to the reader. The literary movement where
the child is simultaneously the central character and the narrator of a novel is the
core of the following analysis. Why would an author choose a child as the central
protagonist of his novel? Which literary message can a child transmit that an adult
fails to impart? How convincing is the child narrator and to what extent do child
narrators need to be convincing in order to transmit a particular message in a
novel? If we assume that Socrates’ observation that children are obstreperous and
that they ‘love chatter in place of exercise’ is accurate, then an author is right in
choosing a child as the narrator of his story, because according to Socrates,
children love to voice their opinion and monopolize discussions anyway.
Consequently, if we assume that Socrates’ observation is accurate, we have already
identified one advantage that can encourage an author to opt for a child narrator.
Of course, this train of thought is not meant to be taken at face value, but this kind
of reasoning indicates that, in the following literary analysis, I am going to discuss
the questions mentioned above and define further aspects of the child narrator’s
attraction more in detail.
The preceding questions make sense in themselves, but then, why write
about the topic of child narrators in adult literature? How come that I have chosen
that topic for my research? At the very beginning of each undertaking, be it reading
a book, doing research, spending the day outdoors or preparing language classes,
there is a core motive that spurs us on as human beings and that helps us to
continue our project until we realize our goal or satisfy our needs. There are plenty
of interesting topics to write about and it was a personal challenge to find a project
that would capture my writing interest for a longer period of time. Consequently, I
have decided to write about a subject matter that involves a personal interest of
mine and I have managed to pin down three major motives that have led to the
analysis of the topic at hand:
First of all, reading books with a child character is my personal preference.
Child narrators manage to keep the novel’s tone light-‐hearted and buoyant, even if
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the story’s topic is a serious matter, like violence, abuse or financial hardship.
Where exactly this cheerfulness in novels told by a child narrator stems from and
how the author manages to maintain the same bright tone throughout the novel is
one of the questions that I am going to have a look at.
Another special aspect that I like about novels featuring child narrators is
that the plot and characters of these novels are just as complex and challenging as
those of any other genre, but the energy and vitality of the young narrator seems to
electrify the reader and spur the reading process on. Of course, there are also adult
characters, which disperse an equal amount of ‘joie de vivre,’ but listening to child
narrators admiring their surrounding propels the reader into a time period when
he was still a child without a care in the world. Whether this carefree sensation is
created in the majority of cases, when a youngster narrates a story, or whether
that has just been the case with those books I have read so far will as well be at the
core of the following research.
Finally, the stories told by child narrators that I have come across include
drawings or pictures, which makes the books interesting on a secondary, non-‐
literary level. In The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time (2003), by Mark
Haddon or in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005), by Jonathan Safran Foer
pictures accompany the text. On the one hand, the pictures lighten up the reading
process, because the illustrations allow the reader to pause for a minute and to
digest the text, before reading on. On the other hand, the visual material is more
than an accessory, because the pictures promote the text’s message on an
additional level, by drawing the reader’s attention to the text in different ways and
by repeatedly illustrating the same idea, which forces him to think about the text
more in depth.
In the two texts mentioned above, the illustrations included are meant to
represent the child’s point of view, which allows the reader to view the text from a
different perspective than what the reader had been imagining at the beginning of
the reading process. The following core questions come to mind when we come to
think of visual material in fiction: Does the type of visual material that an author
chooses for his novel depend on the narrator’s character? Does the visual material
change depending on the narrator’s age and function? And finally, does the reader
sense the author as the selector of the images or does the reader feel as if he is
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confronted with a child’s point of view? The following research is going to include
an analysis of the importance and impact of visual material in literature.
Apart from the fact that I enjoy reading novels with child narrators that
include pictures, there is also the idea that one premise for writing this thesis was
to discuss a literary topic that has been devoid of overt analysis to date. The thesis
at hand would not merit the title of research paper, if it dealt with a literary aspect
that has already been widely covered and examined by previous authors. Critics
and analysts have attributed little attention to the function of child narrators in
adult literature up to now. Consequently, this field of research offers the possibility
for original in-‐depth analysis and discussion.
Finally, apart from writing about literature, I am primarily an English
language teacher. So, to me as an educator, it is of interest to see, how young
people are portrayed in adult literature. Do some adults take their cynical view of
children from the books they read or does literature disseminate a more positive
portrait of the child? To what extent can one say that literature reflects the general
social attitude of the time, when the novel was written?
Additionally, is there such a literary device as a stereotypical child narrator,
or are all narrators, even if they share the aspect that they are children, completely
different and independent characters?
In the end, I am going to have a look at the complex idea if the author’s
background and social environment influence the way he portrays his child
characters. When was the concept of child character created and what was the
corresponding social situation of the child like at that point in time?
It is clear that it is my aim to look at the concept of child narrators from as
many different aspects as possible. Identifying the necessary research features and
understanding them in singular ways was one of the envisaged study challenges
that I need to overcome.
At the beginning of my analysis, in order to facilitate understanding
between me, as the writer of the present thesis, and my readers, I am going to
discuss and define the concepts of ‘child,’ ‘narrator,’ and of ‘adult literature,’ as I
understand and interpret those notions. Yet, before I can outline the key ideas of
the research paper at hand, I am going to delineate the research methodology of
my thesis and grant my readers a brief overall glance at the ideas to come.
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1.2. Research Methodology

First, in order to structure my thesis, I am going to gather data about other
researchers’ thoughts and texts that they have written about the topic of child
narrators. What are, in other critics’ opinion, the advantages of having a child
narrator at the centre of a story? What are the literary shortcomings? It was a
challenge to find secondary literature that fits my topic. Of course, there is
secondary literature that deals with novels like The Bluest Eye (1970), by Toni
Morrison or To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), by Harper Lee. These novels also star
child narrators, but the critical analysis related to these texts generally focuses on
broader social issues like racism, violence, or abuse, rather than looking at the role
of the child and on his function as the narrator of the story.
However, there is secondary literature portraying the social role of the child
throughout the centuries. My analysis of the change in the child’s status in society,
from the 17th century to the present, leads to the explanation of why the child is
treated in fiction the way he or she nowadays is.
Following my analysis of secondary literature there will be a discussion and
weighing of advantages and disadvantages for reader, author and children, when a
narrative is told from a child’s perspective. I am going to have a closer look at two
novels in more detail. I am going to analyze The Life Before Us, by the French writer
Romain Gary and the more recent novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by the
young American writer Jonathan Safran Foer. I have chosen to write about and
compare these two novels, because they stem from different time periods and
these two texts are creations by authors from different social and cultural
backgrounds. If I want to figure out, if there is such a literary device as a
stereotypical child narrator, I need to distinguish, if that device has emerged at
some point in time and stayed the same, or if the child narrator has evolved over
time and mirrors society’s attitude towards children. There are other
contemporary novels featuring child narrators, like When We Were Romans, by
Matthew Kneale, or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark
Haddon, or the Adrian Mole series (1982), by Sue Townsend. However, I wanted to
analyze a novel that discusses a challenging situation from a child’s point of view.
The three foregoing novels though, primarily centre on family relationships, rather
than on large-‐scale social issues.
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Additionally, Mark Haddon has decided that his child narrator has
Asperger’s Syndrome. The author can use the narrator’s level of mental
development and understanding, in order to explain incoherent or inconsistent
child behaviour. Mark Haddon’s character is not meant to be an authentic child
character, because his situation is different from that of average children. Yet, since
I wanted to compare, how and to what extent authors create, or want to create,
common child figures as the narrators of their stories, I have decided to opt for
Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel and for Romain Gary’s text.
At the onset of my research, I wanted to include the in-‐depth analysis of
three or four different novels, stretching over a broader time period. However,
analyzing a broader variety of novels would have come at the expense of thorough
analysis of the two texts that I have finally selected as the basis for my thesis and
which, in my opinion, merit full concentration.
At last, in order to keep my research and analysis interesting for myself and
for the reader, I am going to focus on different social topics within each book. The
child narrators are relating their lives and commenting on their everyday
experiences, but at the same time, the main characters also uncover and portray
more general social issues. I am therefore going to highlight a selection of central
topics that the child narrators stir up in each novel and I am going to have a look at
the way the child narrators expose and assimilate these social concerns in relation
to their childlike worldview.
The detailed analysis of the two novels leads to a general comparison of the
discussed texts, in order to come to a common conclusion. Is there such a literary
device as the stereotypical child narrator or do all child characters differ according
to their authors’ backgrounds and literary style? I expect the novels’ general issues
to differ greatly, because of the difference in the authors’ main social concerns.
However, some fundamental aspects of the social problems that exist between
adults and children have barely changed throughout the ages. Consequently, the
two novels might also display similarities. The thesis’ conclusion will be a
discussion of similarities and divergences in books featuring child narrators.
Finally, in order to structure my analysis and to include an important aspect
of 21st century thinking, I have decided to work with Edward de Bono’s concept of
the ‘Six Thinking Hats’. I am going to look at the idea of child narrators from six
14

different perspectives (factual, emotional, critical, general, positive, creative).

Edward de Bono’s strategy allows me to look at one and the same topic from
different perspectives, including those outlooks that are more challenging and that
do not seem to fit my analysis at first sight.
Of course, in order to apply Edward de Bono’s strategy to its fullest, I would
need to discuss each aspect from all six perspectives. However, in order to
condense my thesis, I am going to apply the concept to my overall discussion and
look at parts of my research paper from the prospect of a specific thinking hat:
looking at key definitions takes, for example, place under the light of factual
thinking, whereas analyzing the shortcomings of writing a novel from a child’s
perspective is a case for the critical thinking hat.

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16

2. Factual Thinking: Key Definitions
2.1. Narrator and Reader

Whenever we start reading a novel, we know after the first few lines already,
whether we like the narrator or not. The narrator is the novel’s second central
figure, sometimes sharing the same level of importance as the main character.
There are different types of narrators, depending on whether the narrator and the
main character are one and the same person or not, or whether the narrator is a
passive observer, who describes the events in the story, or whether he is also a
commentator on and critic of the situation.
If the narrator and the main character are two distinct people, then we talk
of a ‘peripheral narrator.’ The peripheral narrator observes the protagonist and
outlines the actions and role of the story’s central figure. Having a peripheral
narrator tell the story allows the author to present a number of facts to his readers.
These elements are devoid of the main character’s emotions, because the
peripheral narrator comments on the actions of the main character, without any
first hand information on their internal emotions, which motivate the protagonist’s
behaviour. On the one hand, this literary tool is favourable, because pure
observation gives the reader an unbiased and unemotional overview of the
character’s situation. The reader is free to construct his own understanding of the
characters’ actions and to interpret the figures’ behaviour according to his own
worldview, as the reader of the story.
On the other hand, emotions are the fuel that motivates people’s actions.
Consequently, when the reader wants to interpret the characters’ actions, despite
the fact that the reader does not know anything about the characters’ emotional
world, then the reader lacks a crucial dimension that is necessary for deciphering a
novel’s message. According to Vogrin Valerie, ‘things look different, depending on
who is doing the looking and what their vantage point is. Points of view, like
microscopes and telescopes, can reveal things ordinarily unseen.’11 If the narrator
is also the main character, then he can reveal the events on the outside, but also
display his internal micro-‐cosmos to the reader. Valerie Vogrin’s comment points

11 Vogrin, Valerie. “Point of View: The Complete Menu,” in Alexander Steele. Gotham Writer’s
Workshop: Writing Fiction – The Practical Guide from New York’s acclaimed Creative Writing School.
N.Y.: Bloomsbury. 2003, 78 -‐ Further references are included in the text (VV).
17

out the distinct problem generated by a peripheral narrator, which is the idea that
the peripheral narrator observes and comments on another character’s life. Unless
observer and observed are identical, there is a substantial part in the main
character’s life that the peripheral narrator misses out on and which he is unable
to comment on or to relate to. This lack of information generates the risk that the
peripheral narrator invents parts of the story, in order to construct and
complement his own interpretation of the tale. In a way, the reader urges the
narrator to line his story with a continuous stream of information, or the reader is
left wondering what the main character is up to, when he is unobserved. Of course,
the lack of information brings about a degree of suspense and opens up space for
the reader’s imagination and interpretation. In that case, it makes sense that the
author uses a peripheral narrator if he wants to challenge the reader’s creative
capacity and if the author is more concerned with the reader’s own interpretation
of the story, than with the transmission of a specific message.
Additionally, Valerie Vogrin points out that it also depends on the
‘narrator’s vantage point,’ which information the narrator is willing to transmit. If
the peripheral narrator wants to omit information, he is in a much more
favourable situation to do so, because the peripheral narrator can always argue
that he missed out on certain information or that he could not uninterruptedly
observe the story’s characters.
On the other hand, the peripheral narrator misses out on a lot of
information anyway, because of his restricted outlook on the characters. So if the
narrator deliberately cuts out even more information, because he intends to omit
specific information, then the narrator needs to invent more, in order to add
padding to his story.
Elinor Ochs adds that ‘while differing in complexity and circumstance,
narratives transform life’s journeys into sequences of events and evoke shifting
and enduring perspectives on experience’ (EO 20). Elinor Ochs is right when she
points out that each narrative differs in complexity, because the level of complexity
depends on the constructor of the narrative, but also on the receiver’s
receptiveness. A single photograph is a basic visual narrative, which is at first sight
not very complex. The photographer is the person, who squeezes the background
narrative into a condensed shape. The fact that a photograph is the compressed
18

form of a narrative explains the idea that the photograph, or basic narrative, can
again be unpacked and reverted to its previous complexity, if necessary, because
something that exists in a restricted form can generally be expanded.
Moreover, a narrative manages to give shape to an occurrence and to
lastingly fix events and experiences in time. Yet, even if an experience has been
made, processed, captured and even recorded, then an experience still remains
fleeting and alters its shape, because people’s memory is unstable and the way we
interpret any experience depends on the current mood we are in, when we make
an experience and also on the mood we are in, when we are revisiting, discussing
or analyzing an experience.
Additionally, each individual identity is shifting and fleeting too, which
means that with each identity a person adopts, his view on the world and his
capacity for interpretation alter as well. In the end, the interpretation of each
experience is the interpretation of a memory of that same experience.
Consequently, a narrative alters its focus, depending on the narrator’s current
personal emphasis. Yet, Judith A. Howard explains that

”identity” is a keyword of contemporary society and a central focus of social
psychological theorizing and research. At earlier historical moments, identity was
not so much an issue; when societies were more stable, identity was to a great
extent assigned, rather than selected or adopted. In current times, however, the
concept of identity carries the full weight of the need for a sense of who one is,
together with an often overwhelming pace of change in surrounding social
contexts.12

Consequently, people’s desire to define who they essentially are brings about an
equal desire for self-‐reflection and personal narration. Thus, narratives are a
modern way of capturing an experience that would otherwise have been lost for
future comparison and analysis. Each individual turns into the narrator of his own
story and at times, this narrator is peripheral, because as far as the people
surrounding the self are concerned, each individual can only observe the
surrounding actions, but is denied full control.
Moreover, in terms of narrator types, M.H. Abrams additionally identifies
the third-‐person narrator as a common literary device, which is a slight variation

12 Howard, Judith A. “Social Psychology of Identities.” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 367-‐
393, 367.
19

from the peripheral narrator: ‘in a third-‐person narrative, the narrator is someone
outside the story proper who refers to all the characters in the story by name, or as
“he,” “she,” and “they.”’13 Furthermore, the third-‐person narrator is commonly
omniscient, which accounts for the difference between peripheral and third-‐
person narrator. M.H. Abrams suggests that the third-‐person narrator is the
‘intrusive narrator [; the one] who not only reports, but also comments on and
evaluates the actions and motives of the characters, and sometimes expresses
personal views about human life in general’ (MHA 232). M.H. Abrams’ statement
indicates that evaluating and commenting on events in a story is an exclusive
device, which is reserved for the third-‐person narrator.
However, any narrator comments on and evaluates the events and
characters in a story. The peripheral narrator, for example, is meant to remain
without commenting on the main character’s feelings and emotions, because he
does not know about them. Yet, the impossibility to comment is also a statement in
itself: the fact that the peripheral narrator may be absent during important events
in the story indicates that the characters prefer to remain unobserved in certain
situations, which leads the reader to come to a personal conclusion. In this
scenario, the peripheral narrator unintentionally evaluates the characters’ attitude
and behaviour.
M.H. Abrams continues to say that ‘most works are written according to the
convention that the omniscient narrator’s reports and judgments are to be taken
as authoritative by the reader, and so serve to establish what counts as true facts
and values within the fictional world’ (MHA 232). On a first level, the reader needs to
take every narrator’s testimony at face value, because that report is the only
information that the reader has. Yet, as the story progresses, the reader
consciously or unconsciously constructs his own opinion in relation to the story’s
development and to the characters’ behaviour and attitude. What the narrator
relates to is his individual truth and own perception of the events at hand. Still, the
reader is in the position to assemble his own interpretation of the displayed, so
called, facts. In his conclusions, M.H. Abrams acknowledges that ‘the omniscient
narrator may choose to be unintrusive’ (MHA 232), which means that the omniscient

13 Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms (7th edition). Boston: Heinle & Heinle. 1999, 232 –
Further references are included in the text (MHA).

20

narrator may chose to relate the facts without any judgment. In that case, the
third-‐person narrator can provide the reader with more detailed information than
the peripheral narrator, but the problem of the information that remains detained
stays the same as in the case of the peripheral narrator: those things that remain
uncommented speak for themselves and guide the reader’s judgment, whether that
is the author’s or the character’s primary intention or not.
Whereas the peripheral narrator observes and comments on what he
actually witnesses, the third-‐person narrator is on top of what is going on in the
story and is informed or supposed to be clued-‐up. Yet, whether the narrator
imparts his knowledge and shares his observations with the reader or not, remains
up to the narrator. Here we can mention Valérie Vogrin’s comment again which
says that it depends on the narrator’s ‘vantage point,’ which information he shares
with the reader and which light he sheds on the story’s events.
Having a child character as third-‐person narrator or as peripheral narrator
is more challenging for the reader than being faced with an adult narrator. The
child narrator relates the facts differently than an adult, because a child’s focal
points or interests differ from that of grown-‐ups. When a story has a peripheral
child narrator, then the reader needs to convert the narrator’s child reality into an
adult truth. Of course, the author could also render the child more mature and put
the words of a grown-‐up into his narrator’s mouth. However, in that case, the
peripheral narrator becomes a third-‐person narrator, who is involved in the story,
because he has the ability to comment on the story. This association takes away
the narrator’s position as mere observer and draws the character into the focal
point of the reader’s attention, because the reader instinctively wants to compare
his interpretation of the characters’ behaviour to someone else’s, even if it is just
the narrator’s understanding of the story.
Another literary device, which is crucial for our thesis at hand, is the first-‐
person narrator. When the author selects a first-‐person narrator, the story turns
into a ‘narrative of self-‐interest,’ where the narrator focuses on his own life-‐story
and makes his existence the subject of interest for a whole readership. M.H.
Abrams explains that ‘in a first-‐person narrative, the narrator speaks as “I”’ (MHA
21

231). He is the ‘reader’s means of perception’14 and the central character of the
story. In a novel with a first-‐person narrator, the main character develops his
experience in and understanding of life, as described in the novel, simultaneously
with the reader. In this case the stream-‐of-‐consciousness technique, ‘in which we
are presented with outer observations only as they impinge on the continuous
current of thought, memory, feelings, and associations which constitute a
particular observer’s total awareness’ (MHA 233), comes to play a role. The reader
sees and feels simultaneously with the narrator. Each observation furthers the
narrator’s and the reader’s understanding of the incidents in the novel and in the
lives of the characters. There are outer observations that the narrator comments
on, but there are also other events that happen at the same time as the observed
event, but which remain unnoticed or uncommented. Yet, these undisputed
incidents contribute to the later development of the story nevertheless, even if the
narrator does not want to discuss them.
On the other hand, the narrator can refrain from discussing additional
events, because they are especially important for the later development of the
story. Even a first person narrator chooses, which elements or events he wants to
integrate in his story and which he wants to leave undiscussed. Before we have
said that the reader develops his understanding of the story simultaneously with
the narrator. However, what the first-‐person narrator tells the reader is only a
selection of the things, people, and experiences the narrator makes. Thus, the
narrator remains in a superior position in relation to the reader, at least in terms
of the information he can access and process.
Having pointed out the different roles and situations of the narrator, we
need to stress that the narrator or the central character plays a crucial role in the
attraction that a text exerts on its readers. The narrator’s likeability renders the
novel a success or a failure. Vogrin Valerie points out that ‘more than anything else,
the point of view you choose for your story or novel will affect the way the readers
respond emotionally to your characters and their actions’ (AS p.77). The
appreciation and sympathy between narrator and reader depends on the
narrator’s and also on the reader’s character. Either the narrator is completely

14 Steele, Alexander. Gotham Writer’s Workshop: Writing Fiction – The Practical Guide from New
York’s acclaimed Creative Writing School. N.Y.: Bloomsbury. 2003, 79 – Further references are
included in the text (AS).
22

different from the reader in attitude and style, then the reader might want to listen
to the narrator in order to be confronted with a world view that completely
different to his own; or a narrator operates on the same wavelength as the reader.
In that case the reader-‐narrator-‐relationship can also be a success, because the
reader finds it comfortable to follow the reading process, since the discussed
challenges and emotions are familiar to him. Helena Schneider sums up that

die Autentizität personalen Erzählverhaltens hat darüber hinaus einen ganz
bestimmten Effekt auf den Leser. Je besser dieser nämlich über das Innenleben
einer Figur Bescheid weiss und je echter diese Gefühls-‐ und Gedankenwelt auf ihn
wirkt, desto grösser ist aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach auch seine Sympathie für die
jeweilige Figur sowie das Verständnis, das er dieser entgegenbringt.15

The narrator’s likeability depends on the one hand, on the character’s closeness or
distance to the reader. Yet, Helena Schneider argues that on the other hand, the
effect the narrator creates also depends on the character’s authenticity. The more
coherent a character is in his actions and assertions, the better a reader receives
him. This reaction is only natural, since the reader wants to identify with the
narrator and to understand his evolution. So, if the narrator is a person of integrity,
then the reader feels closer to the narrator, because the narrator becomes a
predictable figure and the reader can understand him more easily.
In contrast, even if the narrator remains unpredictable, then the reader can
accept this situation, if the narrator is consistently unpredictable. The narrator’s
predictability allows the reader to get closely involved in the story and to start
guessing beforehand, how the narrative will continue. The narrator’s
unpredictability renders the novel attractive to the reader, because the narrator
nourishes a certain level of suspense all throughout the story. Consequently, the
two, a narrator’s predictability or unpredictability, render the narrator likeable, as
long as the narrator is consistent in his approach or in his self-‐portrayal.
Alexander Chester defines sympathy as ‘a sharing of the joy or sorrow that
another feels. At least it leads to an understanding of the other and consequently
tends to bring personalities into closer social interaction.’16 On the one hand,

15 Schneider, Helena. Harper Lee “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1960) – Die Perspektive des Kindes.
Nordherderstedt: GRIN Verlag. 2004, 43 – Further references are included in the text (HS).
16 Chester, Alexander. “Antipathy and Social Behavior.” The American Journal of Sociology 51.4 (Jan.
1946): 288-‐292, 290.

23

Alexander Chester is right, because each confrontation between characters brings
those people intentionally or unintentionally closer together. Yet, if a person feels
sympathy when dealing with the sorrows of another person, then this initial
positive sharing of emotions can also turn into a feeling of superiority. When a
novel’s character is in distress, then the reader can feel sympathy on the one hand,
yet he can also experience a feeling of superior joy, because he remains unattained
by the character’s suffering. Of course, in the end, the two situations, a feeling of
superiority or genuine sympathy, can lead to the reader being positively attracted
to the narrator or main character, because reader and narrator have shared or
witnessed a common experience that links them together.
In contrast, Sophie Bryant argues that

there is a pseudo-‐sympathy which consists in the arbitrary projection of one’s own
joys, sorrows, and virtues into another mind, […] Similarly, there is a pseudo-‐
antipathy, [when] we ascribe [to the narrator or character] our own defects, and,
in proportion as we abhor them, the abhorrence is transferred to him.17

What Sophie Bryant means is that the reader manages to understand the narrator
the way he wants to understand him. The narrator becomes what the reader wants
him to be. When the reader is in a provocative mood, then challenging the
narrator’s reality and way of expressions turns into the reader’s focal point.
Additionally, if the reader finds it hard to come to terms with certain personal
character traits, then the reader more readily notices these features in a novel’s
characters or in the narrator. Sophie Bryant argues that there is a growing
antipathy, if a figure displays character traits that one personally rejects. Yet,
growing sympathy between reader and character can also result out of initial
rejection, because the reader learns how to handle challenging character traits, by
observing or reading about other people dealing with personal shortcomings.
Moreover, the narrator’s tone of voice triggers the reader’s sympathy for
the novel’s characters. The stories we are going to analyze are narrated by child
characters and accordingly, we assume that the tone of voice in these novels is
childlike or even childish. However, we need to keep in mind that the narrator is
only the puppet and that the writer is the puppeteer, who breathes life into his
characters and who moulds them. Consequently, it is the writer’s understanding of

17 Bryant, Sophie. “Antipathy and Sympathy.” Mind, New Series 4.15 (Jul. 1895): 365-‐370, 365.
24

a child narrator, which defines if the precocious narrator speaks with a childlike or
childish tone of voice or if the child narrator adopts a more mature way of
expression. In later chapters, we are going to analyze the advantages and
disadvantages of either above-‐mentioned procedure. Why choose a child character
with a mature tone of voice? Why not an adult narrator with a childlike tone of
voice or vice-‐versa?
It is a fact though that the reader expects a certain tone of voice in relation
to a certain type of narrator: a fifty year old protagonist is supposed to sound
different from a child narrator; a female narrator different from a male narrator.
Yet, these expectations of idiosyncrasy have been formed by the reader’s personal
previous experiences, fictional or real. If we have just read books by precocious
narrators, who talk like adults, then we will not expect child narrators to have
limited vocabulary resources and to concoct imaginary worlds. Though, if the
reader has not had any previous experience, then childish behaviour and a self-‐
indulgent tone of voice are the stereotypical expectations that the reader has in
mind.
Furthermore, Therese Fischer argues that

the narrator can be described in terms of the distance he holds to the author, [to
the] reader, and to [the] other fictional characters. The distance can be moral,
intellectual, physical (temporal, spatial), and emotional, and can vary in degree
from identification to opposition.18

In the novels I am going to analyze, the distance between reader and narrator
adopts at first sight all of the above-‐mentioned forms, assuming that the reader is
an adult and the narrator a child. However, the distance between reader and
narrator is of flexible nature and varies throughout the story. First of all, since the
two novels at the core of my research feature child narrators, I can say that the
children grow throughout the stories and their understanding of the world
develops too. Of course, the intellectual distance between child narrator and
reader remains, because the reader also grows intellectually by reading the novel
and by making additional real life experiences. Consequently, the reader stays

18 Fischer, Therese. “From Reliable to Unreliable Narrator: Rhetorical Changes in Joyce’s ‘The
Sisters.’” James Joyce Quarterly 9.1 (Fall 1971): 85-‐92, 86 – Further references are included in the
text (TF).
25

intellectually ahead of the child. However, the child’s understanding grows more
rapidly than the adult develops his worldview, because there is more unfamiliar
knowledge that a child can assimilate. The adult has limited access to completely
new material, which he can learn from and so, the intellectual space between child
narrator and adult reader remains established, but the amount of distance shifts
constantly.
Additionally, the emotional distance between reader and narrator also
changes, as the reading process advances. Although the narrator is a child, and by
nature has little in common with the adult world, the reader will identify more and
more with the young narrator as time goes by. However, the age of a novel’s
character is of secondary interest, when it comes to the emotional relationship the
reader develops in relation to the character. Each time the reader picks up the
novel, it is as if he returns to an old friend, shares in and deals with his friend’s
concerns and worries. In The Life Before Us, the narrator Momo says: ‘I must have
been seven or eight at the time, I can’t be exactly sure because I wasn’t dated, as
you’ll see when we’re better acquainted if you think it’s worth your trouble.’19 This
quote illustrates that authors play with the emotional distance between reader and
narrator. In the preceding quote, Momo lures the reader into taking emotionally
part in the story, by appealing to the audience’s compassion and sympathy. A child,
who does not know how old it is, because nobody cares enough to do research or
to tell him, appeals to the reader’s emotions. The emotional relationship between
reader and narrator gradually develops, independently of the narrator’s age. Yet,
Momo’s case illustrates that the reader feels naturally compelled to sympathize
more readily with a child, than with an adult, because children appeal to the adult’s
protective instinct.
Moreover, Momo reduces the distance between himself and the reader, by
addressing the reader directly. In an additional passage Momo says:

He came from Niger, which is one of the numerous countries they’ve got in Africa,
and he made himself, as he kept telling us. “I’m a self-‐made man,” he’d say with his
suit and diamond rings. He had one on each finger and when he was murdered in
the Seine they cut off his fingers for the rings, because it was a settling of accounts.
I’m telling you this right now so as not to upset you later on. (RG 26)

19 Gary, Romain (Emile Ajar). The Life Before Us. New York: New Directions Books. 1978, 3 – Further
references are included in the text (RG).

26

Momo’s immediate address puts the narrator in direct contact with the reader. The
reader feels valorised, because individually spoken to, which diminishes the
emotional distance between reader and narrator. The narrator is aware of his role
as a storyteller, which is positive on the one hand, because Momo manages to
involve the reader in the narrative. On the other hand, as a consequence of the
narrator’s openness, the reader starts to question, whether Momo’s account is
based on facts, or whether his account has been embellished, in order to attract the
audience’s attention.
In relation to the foregoing discussion, Vogrin Valerie mentions the
‘unreliable narrator.’ The critic says that:

in a sense, all first-‐person narrators are somewhat unreliable. Even the most
scrupulous characters may, unconsciously perhaps, shade the truth or emphasize
one fact over another to make themselves look ever-‐so-‐slightly better. […] The
narrator’s unreliability adds to the story’s unsettling effect. […] The unreliable
narrator emphasizes the fact that there is no such thing as a single, static,
knowable reality. (AS 84/ 85)

Vogrin Valerie correctly notes that even the most conscientious storyteller can
never narrate a story by reproducing the events one-‐to-‐one as they actually
occurred, since there is no stable or factual reality. The narrator’s current and
prior mood and his memory of the events will always alter the projection of
incidents, from the past into the present, through narrative. Mood and experience
that interfere with an accurate reproduction of events are natural or unconscious
intrusions. However, Valerie Vogrin also points out that a narrator can deliberately
alter a story, in order to put himself in a better position. In the later development
of the thesis at hand, we are going to discuss the importance of narrative
truthfulness more in detail.
Thirdly, the moral distance between narrator and reader is obvious.
Spontaneously, the assumption goes that a child has lower moral standards than
an adult, because a child has less life experience to take as reference point, in order
to evaluate, what is morally acceptable in his cultural and social context. In
contrast though, children display natural morality towards their environment.
Adult moral behaviour is tainted and influenced by their experiences and by social
conventions that dictate us how to behave ethically correct. Consequently,
27

experience does not serve the purpose of reference point, but is a string of singular
incidents that have altered man’s natural compassion and moral. Disappointment,
anger, aggression and rejection, by other human beings, change our personal
ethical standard, whereas children naturally react in a compassionate and ethical
way. Of course, perceiving children as inherently good is a generalized and
personal opinion, yet one that Jean-‐Jacques Rousseau shared, who argued that:

all things are as good as their Creator made them, but every thing degenerates in
the hands of men. All our customs are nothing but subjection, confinement and
restraint. Civilized man is born, lives, and dies in slavery... as long as he wears the
human form, he is confined by our institutions.20

Jean-‐Jacques Rousseau argues that man ‘lives and dies in slavery.’ Man certainly is
a lifelong prisoner of society’s conventions, because even if a person decides to
reject the socially accepted principles of his time, then he is still controlled by the
fact that he tries to live according to the norm’s opposite, which is an attitude that
equally restricts a man’s freedom.
Additionally, not just people remain lifelong prisoners, but ideas and
creations too. A narrator, for example, is the author’s idea and the narrator always
remains the author’s prisoner, because the author has created him, understands,
and portrays him in a certain way. Of course, each reader interprets the narrator
differently and thus, the reader allows the narrator to break free from his prison.
However, although the reader frees the narrator from the author’s confinement,
the reader renders the narrator anew prisoner of the reader’s individual
interpretation. So, the narrator turns from being the prisoner of one person’s
imaginary world into being the captive of another one’s. Consequently, the
narrator, or ideas, can never escape people’s definition.
Similarly, people’s nature is also held prisoner by other people, because
each person that we encounter in our lives defines who we are. On a first level,
people define us in their minds, based on the impressions they have of us.
However, people also genuinely shape each other, through their actions and words,
which lead to mutual influence. Thus, it is not just general social conventions that

20 Kim, Jocelyn, Andrew Wong, and Jean Wong. “Children as Inherently Good.” Umich.edu:
http://www.umich.edu/~ece/student_projects/childrens_lit/Children_as_Good.html
28

subject people to slavery, but also individual attitudes that people harbour of each
other and that they use, in order to manipulate each other.
Moreover, whether we agree with Jean-‐Jacques Rousseau that our social
experiences shape our ethical sense or whether our personal moral code is innate
remains debatable. Yet, one can assume that the child narrator’s principles are
different from the reader’s at the beginning of the story, because reader and
narrator are different characters and they stem from different social backgrounds
and from various upbringing. The degree of belief in his ethics and the consistency
with which the child narrator pursues his ideals in the story, might lead to the
reader’s adjustment of his own ethics, which decreases the moral distance
between reader and narrator towards the end of the story. Interesting to note is
that similar to the intellectual development during the reading process, both
reader and narrator can also ethically grow in the same direction, as the story
progresses.
Furthermore, while the moral, emotional and intellectual distance between
reader and narrator varies throughout the narrative, the physical gap between
those two entities remains unaltered. In The Life Before Us, Momo, an orphan, lives
in post World War II Paris in an apartment that he shares with other urchins and
an ex-‐prostitute, who functions as substitute mother for Momo and the other
children in their house. Today’s readers can gather information about that period
and if a reader is really compassionate and sensitive, he can begin to emotionally
understand and retrace the physical circumstances and living conditions of the
time. Yet, the physical distance between reader and narrator remains barely
unaltered throughout the whole reading process. This conclusion sounds negative
at first, because this statement seems to point out a lack produced by the reading
process. However, the physical distance between reader and narrator is an asset,
because the physical distance grants the narrator a status of unattainability and of
near divinity, because the narrator is in a situation that the reader will never be
able to attain. Consequently, the reader cannot offensively question the narrator’s
portrayal of his surroundings and has to take parts of the narrative at face value,
due to spatial circumstances.
Additionally, when the reader is faced with the incapability to understand
the narrator’s attitude and behaviour, then the reader can always fall back onto the
29

explanation that he cannot relate to the time and space of the narrator and thus, is
not in the position to judge or fully understand the main character. The reader is
bound to lack understanding. The reader’s awareness that he is not meant to fully
understand the story’s setting puts the reader at ease and allows him to come to
terms with the gaps in his knowledge.
Jonathan Safran Foer’s narrative Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close takes
place in contemporary New York. At first glance, the physical distance between
reader and narrator seems reduced, because place and physical circumstances of
contemporary N.Y. are a reality to the reader. But the plot of the story, where the
child’s father dies in 9/11, on the one hand, removes the reader from the story,
because the character’s setting is different from that of most people, even from
that of most New Yorkers. In this case, the novel’s physical and emotional
dimensions merge, because the more physical distance there is between reader
and narrator, the more emotional distance is also created. Of course, the reader
can feel emotionally close to the narrator, because he feels compassion for a child,
who has lost his father. Yet, this emotional distance simultaneously increases,
when the reader cannot really understand the full emotional scope of the
narrator’s world, because he has never experienced a similar situation, like losing a
person in a terrorist attack.
In conclusion, during the reading process there is a constant shift between
moral, intellectual, physical and emotional distance, between reader and narrator,
varying from a situation where the reader closely identifies with the narrator to
adopting the position where the reader stands in complete contrast to the
narrator. The following thesis will analyze more in detail to what extent a child
narrator influences these levels of distance more than an adult narrator and which
advantages, or disadvantages, can result from these constellations.
Finally, Therese Fischer argues that

”rhetoric” […] includes all means by which the author of fiction influences his
readers. One of those means can be a personal narrator who tells the reader a
story from his subjective point of view – not necessarily identical with that of the
author. But the author can make the fictional reality he presents appear also less
subjective. He may confront us with ‘objective’ scenes, i.e. dialogues with short
neutral descriptions and summaries. (TF 85)

30

Therese Fischer’s argument indicates that the narrator’s point of view and his
descriptions are rectified by the author’s subtle touch. The author is the creator of
his storyteller and thus, should bestow his puppet with the necessary attitude and
dialogues, in order to get his literary message across, without ulterior interference
in the story. However, what Therese Fischer means is that the author can include
other characters’ dialogues in order to make it clear to the reader that the
narrator’s point of view is only one, amongst many, and that the narrator’s
perspective is not the norm. If the narrator relates the incidents in the novel the
way he sees them, he relies on tone of voice and behaviour of the other characters,
in order to formulate his observations and his response to the other characters.
However, the narrator’s interpretation of and reaction to the other characters is
his personal vantage point and another narrator would react differently to the
situation. In this case, the author also defines the way in which his character reacts,
because he wants to produce a specific narrative effect.
If the author wants the reader to readjust his evaluation of the narrator’s
point of view and thus, introduces dialogues as a technique to allow other
characters to voice their opinion and perspective on the scene, then the
interpretation of those scenes depends on the reader and alters from one reader to
another. Moreover, an author cannot rely on dialogues to give the reader a chance
to evaluate the narrator’s narrative truthfulness, because dialogues are not neutral
indicators of reality either. The reader can only guess the tone of the dialogue by
interpreting the characters’ reactions. However, like in real life, the characters can
misinterpret tone of voice and react in an inappropriate way. Elinor Ochs
comments:

narratives are versions of reality. They are embodiments of one or more points of
view rather than objective, omniscient accounts. While narrators emphasize the
truth of a narrated text, others grapple with the fragility of memory and the
relativity of point of view. […] “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of
memory against forgetting,” [yet,] memory never captures authentic experience.
“We immediately transform the present moment into abstraction. We need only
recount an episode we experienced a few hours ago: the dialogue contracts to a
brief summary, the setting to a few general feature … Remembering is not the
negative of forgetting. Remembering is a form of forgetting.” An important
challenge to humanity is to recognize that lives are the past we tell ourselves. (EO
21)

31

Narratives are only versions of reality, but they are presented as personalized,
individual truths. The reader can adopt the text or narrative at face value, or try to
read between the lines. Yet, there is lurking danger that the reader interprets too
much and that he grapples with messages that the author or the narrator did not
intend to transmit. Then again, we can ask the question if a reader can ever
interpret too much and draw or extract too much information from a text. The
reading process allows the reader to make sense of his own reality and if a text
represents a completely different reality and speaks of a completely different truth
to him than what the author intended or what other readers make of the text’s
message, then it is perfectly legitimate if the reading process triggers a level of
understanding that allows the reader to personally develop and to move on in his
understanding of the world.
In the end, it is only a mixture of the narrator’s interpretation, of the
reader’s understanding of the narrator’s and of the other’s characters’ attitudes,
which helps the reader to unravel a story and to make sense of it. The foregoing
discussion indicates that the reading process and the reader-‐narrator-‐relationship
is a spiral, the outcome of whose burble is a personalized reality, for each reader.
According to Elinor Ochs, ‘narratives are tales that tellers and listeners map onto
tellings of personal experience. In this sense, even the most silent of listeners is an
author of an emerging narrative’ (EO 21). The reader reshapes and reconstructs the
narrative and moulds it to suit his own longing and experience. A reader can shape
and interpret the same text in different ways in order to cater for different needs.
In conclusion, the narrator’s shape and function in a novel depend, on the
one hand, on the author’s intention and his understanding of the narrator he has
created. On the other hand, the definition of the narrator also depends on the
reader’s understanding, interpretation and background experience.

32

2.2. The Child

After having defined the notion of ‘narrator,’ it is essential to outline the concept of
‘child,’ since the core question of the research paper at hand revolves around the
function of child narrators in adult fiction. What or who is a child? Where does this
concept stem from? Have children always been defined as children or has the idea
of the child changed over time? At first, all these questions appear redundant,
because each person has straight away an idea in mind of what he understands
and defines as ‘child.’ At the same time, this diagnosis indicates that the definition
of what we understand when we talk of a child, depends on each individual and
also on social and cultural circumstances. Hence, the following lines serve to define
a common basis of what a child is or might be.
When we speak of children aged five or less, then there is general consent
that these very young members of society need adult care, like emotional, physical
and financial support, in order to get around in the world and to basically survive.
However, the concept of a child older than six becomes a challenge. At this point in
my thesis, I hear critics arguing that people as young as six are of course to be
considered and treated as children. But my question is what does it imply to ‘act
like’ and to be ‘treated like a child’? Six-‐year-‐old children vary greatly in their
ability to understand and process the world. So where does this developmental
discrepancy stem from? Has the denomination of people aged between six and
fourteen as children evolved, because of the young person’s reduced physical and
mental capacities or is it a social construct that has developed over time in relation
to the young person’s communal role?
The general perception that people have in mind when they hear the word
‘child’ is a different one nowadays than a century ago. People’s upbringing, as well
as the adult’s and the child’s social responsibilities and roles, have changed over
time. The stereotypical image that we have in mind, when we think of a
seventeenth-‐century child highlights the discrepancy between social classes at the
time. On the one hand, we have the concept of the child dressed in rags, that had to
help on the farms and grow up physically, while confronted with poverty and
having to fend for itself. Opposed to this image is the picture of the wealthy child,
brought up amongst riches and enjoying a private education, by personal tutors.
Historical research shows that ‘the first children's playground was built in a park
33

in Manchester in 1859.’21 This fact highlights the inferior role of children in the
past. Instead of focusing on play, young people, as soon as their muscles allowed
them more or less decent physical activity, needed to work in order to support
their family financially and to secure their future. Children were seen as miniature
adults, who during the Industrial Revolution had to work in factories, which
exploited them more than their farming families before the economical change.
According to research,

recognition of childhood as a state different from adulthood began to emerge in the
16th and 17th centuries. Society began to relate to the child not as a miniature adult
but as a person of a lower level of maturity needing adult protection, love and
nurturing. This change can be traced in painting: In the Middle Ages, children were
portrayed in art as miniature adults with no childish characteristics. In the 16th
century, images of children began to acquire a distinct childish appearance. From
the late 17th century onwards, children were shown playing. Toys and literature
for children also began to develop at this time.22

However, according to Tim Lambert, it took society until the 19th century to build a
children’s playground, as explained above. Thus, public consciousness about the
child’s status in society and about the child’s needs started to change, but only
sluggishly. The change in the elders’ attitude towards children was related to the
growing financial security, furthered by the industrial revolution. During the time
preceding the economical upraise, families had to concentrate on their day-‐to-‐day
organization, instead of focusing on their children’s psychological development.
Consequently, painters visually representing children with grown up features
mirror the past need for young people to act like adults, because of their social
circumstances. Nowadays, experts focus on and study the most adapted
psychological interaction with a child, but anew adults have to focus more on
financial security than on childcare, because the cost of people’s daily life has risen
due to high lease price and expensive nutrition. In a way, the focus on the child’s
wellbeing has launched a spiral that pushes adults to concentrate more on finance,
than on the child’s world. Nutritionists, for example, advise how to feed a child a
balanced diet, in order to further his optimal physical and intellectual growth. Yet,
the cost for appropriate care, according to experts and to research, needs to be

21 Lambert, Tim. “A Brief History of Children.” Localhistories.org:
http://www.localhistories.org/children.html.
22 Wikipedia. “Child.” Wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child.
34

financed, which demands parents to take up well-‐paid, but time and energy-‐
consuming jobs; time and energy they consequently fall short of spending with
their children. Nowadays, the stress on finance is a different one than in the past,
because in our time, parents aim for more than survival; parents want to cater for
their children’s maximum and ideal development, but the need to earn money is
still the reason that diverts the parents’ attention away from the child. So, in a way
people nowadays pretend that they work for their children’s wellbeing, which they
do, because they accommodate the children’s needs, according to the current
expert advice and common social standard, but in fact this statement is
pretentious, because parents nowadays spend as little or even less quality time
with their offspring than 100 or 200 years ago. According to D.D. Bielby,

among all families, the proportion of dual-‐earner couples has nearly doubled since
1960-‐to about 55%. Meanwhile, the traditional family form of a married couple
with children and with the wife not in paid labor force has declined to just 15%.
Over the same period, women’s continuous participation in the paid labor force
has risen, particularly among mothers of young children; gender differences in
levels of education have declined; and the sex role attitudes of both men and
women have become more egalitarian.23

Of course, on the one hand, there is a set of advantages that a family fosters, when
both parents earn the household money. For one, feminist efforts have finally
started to gradually pay off and lead to an egalitarian lifestyle, for both, men and
women. Of course, there is still a discrepancy in the amount of money, men and
women are paid for accomplishing the same kind of jobs, and according to D.D.
Bielby,

specifically, women allow (and are permitted to allow) family tasks and
responsibilities to intrude on their paid work, but men are less inclined to do so.
Men, in contrast, allow (and are permitted to allow) work to intrude on family
time. Men posits the work-‐family connection as a system of exchange of personal
resources including commitment, skills, and energies, in return for economic
security, status, and a sense of purpose and identity. (DDB 289)

D.D. Bielby’s statement highlights the discrepancy between men and women in
terms of work related attitude, but that topic is a completely different matter, fit
for discussion in later thesis. Yet, what we can say is that positively, nowadays,

23 Bielby, D.D. “Commitment to Work and Family.” Annual Review of Sociology 18 (1992): 281-‐302,
282 – Further references are included in the text (DDB).

35

women are at least allowed to pursue the jobs and lead the lives that suit their
interests best. In relation to the child’s world, we can say that if the parents are
satisfied with their daily effort, the children also benefit from the parents’ balanced
frame of mind, when the family needs to interact, or when shared decisions need
to be taken.
On the other hand, pursuing a job is demanding and the employee cannot
take a break, whenever he or she feels like it, whereas mothers, who work as
housewives, can relax at least for a short amount of time, when the children are at
school. The women’s public job demands them though to be constantly present
and alert all the time. This amount of pressure leads to the parents’ or the mother’s
exhaustion, which is less furthering for the relationship between the parents as a
couple and puts a strain on the relationship between parents and children. In that
respect, children nowadays need to learn at a much younger age, how to respect
that their parents have a work life and also a private life that they are not
necessarily part of and that their parents need time to recover from their daily
effort.
Of course, in the past, parents used to work hard on the farms for long
hours each day. At the time, the children’s needs and their craving for attention
also came second, after the work had been done. Yet, I believe that it is harder for
children nowadays to understand their parents’ effort at work, because work is
removed from home. In the past, the children could observe their parents at work
and had to share in their labour, which made the children learn the hard way, why
their parents were too tired in the evening, to share in their play. Nowadays,
children are more protected and middle-‐class families employ cleaning ladies, who
take care of the household. On the one hand, the mother’s absence requires extra
support and the family can afford the extra expense, because the mother is also
working. Yet, the consequence is that children often ignore what ‘work’ means or
implies and thus, children find it challenging to understand that their parents react
irritated at times, when there seems to be no apparent or immediate reason.
Additionally, the reason why more women need to go to work nowadays,
than in the past, is the fact that there are a greater number of single parent
households, than fifty years ago. Consequently, on the one hand the rise in the
number of working women testifies of equality in status between sexes. Yet,
36

women who need to work also points out that family structures are currently
rearranging, which also leads to a child that needs to emotionally grow up much
faster than in the past, because the child also tends to adopt the role of the missing
partner, in terms of moral and emotional support.
Of course, the foregoing discussion is based on modern middle-‐class
families, who can afford such luxuries as a cleaning lady. I am aware that I am
talking in terms of clichés. Yet, in conclusion, I do believe that in the past, children
had to grow up physically and emotionally, because their parents could not afford
the luxury to pamper their offspring with time and money. And still, nowadays
children have to grow up emotionally, because young people need to deal with
their parents’ (emotional and physical) absence and their effort to earn money.
Positive though is that nowadays, the dichotomy between rich and poor does not
lead to such vast differences in children’s social roles anymore, than in the past,
since in Europe, children of almost all social classes have access to basic
educational standard and to support by the government. However, while
nowadays children are much more socially and physically protected than some
centuries ago, we have to say that their psyche had to painfully adapt in different
ways. It is dismissed as a cliché, but nowadays, children are not children anymore
in the sense that their worldview is much more influenced by an adult way of
thinking. In the old days, children were sent out, when the grown-‐ups were
discussing serious matters or topics unfit for children’s ears, like sexual debates or
financial concerns. A child had to take guesses at the adults’ secrets and construct
his understanding and reality, by patching together the bits and bobs of
conversations he could gather. Of course, this secrecy led to misunderstanding, to
taking children for fools and often to the child’s personal painful discovery of the
truth, which could have been prevented, by the adults simply revealing reality. Yet,
secrecy encouraged the young people’s creativity. Nowadays, children have access
to all kinds of information, even if they live in socially challenged circumstances. In
The Life Before Us, by Romain Gary, the protagonist observes: ‘I stopped outside a
movie, but this picture didn’t admit minors. It’s a laugh when you think of the
things minors aren’t allowed to see and all the other stuff they are’ (RG 149). Romain
Gary’s character lives in an even more exaggerated social reality than the average
37

child, but it is accurate that modern children are exposed to and share the same
reality as adults.
Additionally, today’s children are encouraged to voice their opinion and to
form their own attitudes, whereas two hundred years ago, children were urged to
live by the rules of their parents’ religion and ethical standards and to keep quiet:
‘children were meant to be seen but not heard.’ Crotty Patrick mentions ‘the
opening scene of The Barracks (1963), where Willie, Una, and Sheila play their
allotted party in the ritual of nightfall in the presence of their silently suffering
stepmother, [and in which] Elizabeth, introduces us to a world where children
have a deeply ingrained understanding of their secondariness.’24 John McGahern’s
novel is set in 1940s Ireland. So far I have pointed out children’s inferior social
status in the centuries leading up to the 19th century. However, The Barracks
illustrates that psychology and education have only recently managed to divert the
generally dismissive attitude towards children. Tanner Tony summarizes that

the morally untrained child was, in fact, considered a threat. But gradually the
image of the child described by [Jean-‐Jacques] Rousseau and celebrated by
[William] Wordsworth filters down through the various social institutions. Horace
Bushnell, an enlightened theologian, without preaching the innate goodness of the
child, explicitly condemns the educational methods based on a presupposition of
the child’s inherited evil. In pleading for a more liberal Christian nurture he
effectively turns attention to the child’s latent instincts and aptitudes and
advocates their more natural, unhampered growth. […] “It is frightful to think how
they batter and bruise the delicate tender souls of their children, extinguishing in
them what they ought to cultivate, crushing that sensibility which is the hope of
their being, and all in the name of Jesus Christ.” The wide influence of Bushnell
indicates that it was not the sophisticated sensibility of the adult as rehearsed by
[Laurence] Sterne, but rather the uncommitted, almost inarticulate sensibility of
the child that had become the focus of much interest by the time [Henry] James
and [Samuel] Clemens were writing.25

The French novel Un Bon Petit Diable, by the ‘Comtesse de Ségur,’ born Sophie
Rostopchine, which appeared in 1865 highlights the rising trend of naming and
denouncing inappropriate adult behaviour in relation to children. In Sophie
Rostopchine’s coming-‐off-‐age novel, the main character Charles is twelve years old
and he keeps playing tricks on his mean aunt. This French novel illustrates the
dichotomous perception of the time: On the one hand, people still want to believe

24 Crotty, Patrick. “’All Toppers’: Children in the Fiction of John McGahern.” Irish University Review
35.1 (Spring-‐Summer 2005): 42-‐57, 45.

25 Tanner, Tony. “The Literary Children of James and Clemens.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 16.3
(Dec. 1961): 205-‐218, 206/ 207 – Further references are included in the text (TT).
38

that children deserve being treated in the condescending way adults were used to,
because children allegedly misbehave and need to be chastised, according to
religious convention. Alice Miller sums up that ‘society [chose] to disregard the
mistreatment of children, judging it to be altogether normal, because it [was] so
commonplace.’26
On the other hand, there was the idea that adults also need to watch their
behaviour and attitude and that children are inherently good, when they get a
chance. Still, we need to note that a countess, who was a member of a society that
could afford their offspring an education, wrote Un Bon Petit Diable. This social
circumstance highlights that there were looming changes in terms of how to
educate and treat children, according to their age and needs. However, those initial
debates happened in selected social classes and did not constitute a common
change in people’s attitudes.
Still, although contemporary children are encouraged to speak up,
whenever and with whomever they are, I wonder how today’s children can form
their own attitudes in relation to a subject, when they are confronted or flooded
with too much information? Nowadays, children have to grow up intellectually
much quicker, in order to make sense of all the information youngsters are
confronted with, on a daily basis.
Of course, on the other hand, one can say that children in the old days had to
study the Bible and repeat their elders’ point of view and adopt adult behaviour all
too quickly, because they had to fend for themselves. So, although children in the
past had to use their imagination, in order to construct their understanding of the
world, past children were, on the other hand, subject to adult and religious
indoctrination and could not fully or independently make up their own mind.
Nowadays, psychoanalytical studies have made it possible for children to be
ministered according to their age: teaching material is adapted to the child’s
understanding and needs and children have much more material to enhance their
creative sides. Yet, today’s children have to cope with a society aligned with
materialism. The adults’ desire for high economic standard and the aspiration to a
more or less luxurious lifestyle, lead to parents leaving their children alone at

26 McCall Smith, Alexander. Collins Dictionary of Quotations. Glasgow: Harper Collins. 2003, 80 –
Further references are included in the text (AMC).

39

home or under the care of nannies or day care centres, in order to earn a living and
to finance those extravagant dreams. In a way, nowadays children are also left to
get on by themselves, like 17th century children, but now the focus is more on
psychological and emotional rather than on financial scarcity.
Additionally, we need to ask the question to what extent specially child
adapted teaching and playing material is relevant if a child has to deal with an
adult world on a daily basis anyway? Is it not confusing for a modern child to have
free access to adult life, like the parents’ divorce files or sexual information, while
on the other hand being treated like a child in relation to schooling? In the 21st
century, there are allusions to sexual activity on various multimodal levels, while
the divorce rate of people has never been as high as nowadays. Our children grow
up in a world where adults transmit the idea that (sexual) relationships between
partners are commonly fleeting and unstable. Consequently, children have to
endure the tug game between parents, who got a divorce, while trying to find some
sort of stability in their young lives. A couple of centuries ago, children were
beaten, if they misbehaved and they had to work hard as factory labourers, but
their existence was stable. Children in the past knew what to expect from their
elders, while nowadays children have to suffer from their parents’ inconsistency.
Of course, I am not an advocate of chastising children. The point I want to make is
that the adult-‐child relationship has moved from one guilt trip to another,
throughout the centuries. In the past, parents needed to feel guilty for releasing the
tension, created by their financial worries, by beating up their children, while
currently parents buy acquittal for depriving their children of homely stability, by
spending a vast amount of money on toys and on granting their offspring
extravagant wishes.
Helena Schneider notes that in the past children were considered as adults,
as soon as they knew how to fend for themselves. The critic explains that
emotional or intellectual development was a secondary criterion in defining
whether a young person was still considered or treated as a child or not: ‘Der
Zustand des Erwachsenseins wurde demnach gleichgesetzt mit der Fähigkeit, sich
versorgen zu können und hatte nichts zu tun mit geistiger oder emotionaler Reife’
(HS 10). In a way, past societies were right, since it is a challenge to define at what
age a young person passes from childhood into the teenage phase and then, into
40

adulthood. Some children aged ten or less, at times, behave and act more mature,
than people aged sixteen or seventeen. Consequently, the term ‘child’ legally refers
to a defined age group, but not to a person’s intellectual, emotional and physical
capacities. This distinction allows our social system to apply different legal
consequences and to control people accordingly to their age. This method supports
a regulated form of life, but this approach does not capture all the children, who
have attained a level of maturity, which is more advanced for their age.
In contrast, adults are sometimes chided as being childish or as behaving
like a child, extracting a pejorative connotation. When we say of a person that he or
she is a child, then we limit that person; we circumcise his freedom and assume
that a person does not know how to act, according to conventional adult
behaviour. In this case, the idea of ‘child’ indicates a person’s relation to another
person, independent of his physical development.
Nevertheless, conventions are just that: they are constructs that allow us to
interact with each other as individuals, on more or less the same level of
understanding. Now, if an adult acts differently to the norm or acts like we would
expect a child to act, we have to understand that he has constructed his own
reality, including and catering for his individual conventions. Conversely, is it
appropriate to say that that person acts like a child, taking into account that the
idea of acting like a child has a negative connotation? On the one hand, we belittle a
person and take away his freedom, by saying that he acts like a child. Yet, on the
other hand, once the adult world has written a person off as childish, then that
individual has the jester’s license to expand in any way he wants. If society expects
behaviour deviant to the norm, a person might as well act irresponsibly and
childishly.
In contrast, when we say that a child behaves like an adult, then this
diagnosis is usually conceived as a positive character trait. The grown-‐ups
consider the child mature and responsible for his age. Allowedly, one can regard
the child as precocious and smart-‐alec, depending on the child’s character and way
of expressing himself, but usually a child thinking and acting along the lines of an
adult is taken in well. Children’s behaviour is different from ours, but it is the
adult’s construct to say that adult behaviour or the grown-‐up attitude is right or
trend setting.
41

This common practice indicates that people have stereotypical ideas in

mind of the less well-‐developed psychological and emotional abilities of a child.
Yet, we need to analyze if nowadays’ children are actually less developed than
adults, since today’s children are confronted from a very early age on with material
and information that used to be reserved to the adult world, a few centuries ago, as
discussed earlier on. Children might lack the experience and articulacy to express
their opinion at the age of eight or ten, but the young people nowadays certainly
live in a different reality than in the past. As a consequence, adult assumptions
define the concept of ‘the child’ and these believes, when a child is still a child vary,
from one person to another. According to Schapiro Tamar,

we have conventional norms for applying the concepts “adult” and “child,” but they
do not always match our intuitions about how to treat people. Positive laws may
stipulate, for example, that anyone under the age of seventeen counts as a child
from the point of view of the state. But we can ask in any particular case whether
this stipulation is reasonable from a moral point of view. Questions about when to
treat children as adults, and when to treat adults as children, bring out the fact that
there can be a gap between our conventional applications of these terms and their
proper application for moral purposes.27

Previously, I have pointed out that children might lack the articulacy to express
their point of view, but some children can have high linguistic abilities that
distinguish them from other children and approximate them to the adult world.
Our surroundings define our learning and our learning curve. Adults can more
deliberately choose which information they want to assimilate, whereas children
absorb and imitate their parents’ actions and words. Of course, I have argued that
adults choose, which learning and which way of life they want to pursue and which
attitude they want to adopt. Yet, in that respect, adults have often still remained
children, because adults commonly adapt to the lifestyle and attitudes of their
surrounding age group, or of the neighbourhood they live in, and hardly ever stop
to question what their personal aim in life is. Of course, on the one hand, it is
furthering when people strive to keep up with other people, but on the other hand,
adults are role models for their children and modern children learn to materially
compare themselves with other people, like their parents do, instead of learning
how to identify and pursue their individual path in life. James Baldwin (1924-‐

27 Schapiro, Tamar. “What is a Child?” Ethics 109.4 (Jul. 1999): 715-‐738, 715 – Further references
are included in the text (TS).

42

1987) argued that ‘children have never been very good at listening to their elders,
but they have never failed to imitate them. They must, they have no other models’
(AMC 79). The point I want to make is that there are children that behave like adults
and that talk like adults, because the young people imitate their elders. This being
ahead of the group is not the norm, but exceptions like this illustrate that defining
what a child is cannot depend on people’s individual aptitudes and age, but that
classifying people as children, teenagers, adults and elders serves the purpose of
organizing our social cooperation as a number of individuals with different needs.
Additionally, it is a fact that children and elders have less developed
physical abilities than people in their 30s, so these terms also serve the purpose of
protecting young people from exploitation and child labour. Tamar Schapiro
argues that

the idea that children have a special status, one which is different from that of
adults, is evident in our everyday attitudes. Our basic concept of a child is that of a
person who in some fundamental way is not yet developed, but who is in the
process of developing. It is in virtue of children’s undeveloped condition that we
feel that we have special obligations to them, obligations which are of a more
paternalistic nature than our obligations to other adults. The special obligations to
children include duties to protect, nurture, discipline, and educate them. They are
paternalistic in nature, because we feel bound to fulfill them regardless of whether
the children in question consent to be protected, nurtured, disciplined, and
educated. Indeed we think of children as people who have to be raised, whether
they like it or not. (TS 716)

Tamar Schapiro is right when he points out that adults feel naturally responsible
for children. The question remains though, whether every adult has the right
emotional, psychological and intellectual capacity to educate a young person. Often
adults feel superior to children on the grounds that they are older and have more
life experience, but when an outsider has a closer look at various adult-‐child
relationships, then it becomes apparent that at times, the child behaves more
ethically and compassionately developed, than the older person. The discrepancy
between social norm and reality highlights that the notion of the child is a social
construct that regulates everyday life and the social system, but that cannot fully
characterize a person’s behaviour, attitude or way of expression. What
characterizes and forms individual behaviour and attitude are social
circumstances, life experiences and a natural understanding of the world and its
people, independent of age and race. In the present thesis, the notion of child that I
43

am going to use is the one defined by our society, where a child is a person under
the age of eighteen, even after having figured out that there is a grey area that
blurs the definition of and the distinction between adult and child. Additionally, we
will see that each author masters the art of bestowing special abilities, character
traits and attitudes on their child characters, independently of the character’s
intended age.

44

2.3. The Child Narrator

When we think of adult novels featuring child narrators, we spontaneously assume
that this literary genre has always existed. However, as Schneider Helena explains,
Marc Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is the first book, which is consistently written from
a child’s perspective: ‘Bei Twains Roman Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
handelt es sich zudem um das erste Buch überhaupt, das konsequent aus der Sicht
eines Kindes geschrieben ist’ (HS 19). To the reader it is astonishing to discover that
the perspective of the child had a secondary or non-‐existent status in literature,
before the beginning of the 19th century. However, Helena Fischer points out that
Huckleberry Finn is the first text ‘consistently’ narrated from a child’s angle. This
detail indicates that there had been anterior literature focusing on children’s voice,
but with a less thorough concentration on the child narrator and on his psyche.
Moreover, our foregoing discussion has uncovered the child’s derivative
status in society before the 19th century. Children were either treated like young
adults, ready to work as cheap labourers or as unworthy of adult attention, except
for the offspring of wealthier families. In the past, the little interest in children’s
psyche or inner life is the consequence of a society securing their immediate
economical survival and their long-‐term future, by sending their children off to
work. Nowadays, readers might think that the past societies were dismissive and
cruel towards children, because they regarded children as financial assets.
However, people at the time had to rely on the support of the young generation, in
order to spend their retirement in financial and emotional security. If the parents
in the old times had focused on their children’s psychological protection, then they
would have needed to admit that child labour, which was a crucial part of their
livelihood, had to be abolished. Parents would have blamed themselves for their
maladjusted treatment of minors, and thus, at the time, accepting the situation as a
common practice was the most viable path to pursue.
Past social, financial and emotional circumstances used to dictate and
define the child’s status in society before the 19th century and accordingly,
influenced the child’s role in literature at the time. Ferrucci Franco argues that

if one wanted to locate in Western Literature the time of the momentous
appearance of children as characters, endowed with a presence and mystery of
their own, one would spot the advent toward the very end of the XVIII century;
45

and, at that point, the investigator would be struck by the unexpected discovery.
He would realize, not without awe, that the children had to be heard because they
were dying. The child is born in literature with a destiny of death in life.28

On the one hand, Franco Ferrucci is of course right when he addresses the poor
working conditions and exploitation of children. Additionally, in general, the
poorer the family, the more children the parents had, as a way of securing their
future accommodation. Consequently, famine, low hygienic standards and disease
led to the death of a large number of children, with poor health and shabby care.
On the other hand though, I cannot fully agree with Franco Ferrucci’s
conclusion, because from the 18th century onwards up to the present date, children
have continuously and gradually come to attract the attention of psychologists,
teachers, authors and parents. The increase in literature, which focuses on
children, does not just illustrate the high infantile death rate, but literary
expression also mirrors the rising status of children in society.
Elinor Ochs also points out that ‘narratives are often launched in response
to current worries, complaints, and conflicts. In a reciprocal way, in the course of
their telling, portions of narratives may provoke interlocutors’ concerns about the
present and future’ (EO 25). Of course, Elinor Ochs’ observation expands beyond
literature that is written from a child’s perspective. Any text intends to provoke the
reader’s reaction and incite thinking about or questioning of established
worldviews. Consequently, there are those narratives that the reader chooses as a
response to his own current problems and that he consults as a reference point for
a personal conflict. In contrast, there are those concerns that Elinor Ochs mentions
above, which are related to specific events in time. In those cases, literature helps
to display and digest contemporary events and preserve that experience in time. If
we think of current incidents that are exposed through literature, then topics like
terrorist attacks or child abuse come to mind. In Extremely Loud and Incredibly
Close, Jonathan Safran Foer discusses the specific topic of how a child feels after
and deals with the loss of the father, because of a terrorist attack. Equally, there
are currently biographies of children that have fallen victim to adult sexual abuse
or to abduction by adults. The topic of child abuse is not a recent phenomenon.
There have been cases of child abuse as long as there have been humans. The

28 Ferrucci, Franco. “The Dead Child: A Romantic Myth.” MLN 104.1 (Jan. 1989): 117-‐134, 117/ 118.
46

interesting development though is that only recently the taboo has been broken
that made it impossible to discuss child abuse publicly. Thus, literature mirrors
and discusses those topics that a current society is ready to deal with.
Finally, if we agree that the child has gradually adopted a more prominent
social role, we can argue that the old idea of the child, as financial asset, had to die,
in order to enable the birth of the more enlightened, public role of the child. In
relation, children at the time were literally and figuratively dying, at the time when
the adults’ attention started to veer in the young people’s direction. It is the child’s
destiny to die in terms of its family identity and to emerge as an individual. Before
the rise of the child’s public status, children were defined according to their social
background. The definition of people in relation to their social background, by
their contemporaries, is still a common practice, but nowadays, society is more
anxious furthering a child with a poor social background, than exploiting that
young person, in terms of child labour or in terms of denying him a basic
educational standard.
Helena Fischer has pointed out that Huckleberry Finn was the first novel
written from a child’s perspective, but in contrast we have to admit that Marc
Twain’s novel is a ‘Bildungsroman,’ which is a coming-‐off-‐age novel, where the
protagonist develops throughout the novel. In that respect, Marc Twain’s novel is
one in a series of books that find their origin in the Middle Ages and even before
that, in the Bible. The focus of this literary genre is directed at the protagonist’s
self-‐development. The young main character has to overcome a number of
challenges, through which he grows emotionally and physically stronger, until he
reaches his intended goal or until, for his age, he has attained an advanced level of
maturity. Today’s novels that centre on the child can also be classified as belonging
to the category of ‘Bildungsroman,’ but the challenges that our modern literary
heroes have to overcome are different to the defiance the ancient figures had to
deal with.
The difference between previous forms of coming-‐off-‐age novels and their
contemporary versions is that nowadays the child turns into the narrator,
commenting on his own development, whereas in the past, the child’s development
was portrayed from an adult perspective. The modern child narrator criticizes and
judges his own progress, while the reading adult turns into a silenced observer. Of
47

course, the adult author creates the child narrator and bestows a voice upon him.
In that respect, the focus has moved away from the child’s psyche, towards the
message that the adult creator wants his child puppet to transmit. In contrast
though, throughout the reading process, the reader imagines a child narrator and
what his imaginary child says appears to the reader as thoughts being conceived
and voiced by a child. The author moves into the background during the reading
process and the reader’s attention is attracted by the child’s narrative. How
convincing the narrator’s voice is as that of a child, or how realistic the narrator’s
language needs to be as that belonging to a child, will be discussed later on.
Moreover, one should think that authors, who have children of their own or
who are in regular contact with children, as teachers for instance, feel more at ease
writing from a child’s perspective, because those writers know, by experience, how
children behave and how young people express themselves. However, taking care
of children requires a lot of time investment and effort, so childless writers have
more time to work on their text.
Secondly, the more distance a person has to a subject matter, the broader
the outlook can be. When you entertain an adequate amount of distance to a
problem, you are uninfluenced or untainted by your experience and you remain
unbiased. Of course, in order to write about children, the author needs to have a
realistic amount of psychological and linguistic knowledge of children’s abilities, in
order to recreate a convincing child narrator. For an author it is sufficient though
to draw from his own childhood experiences and to feed on daily observations, in
order to illustrate how young people behave.
Yet, I have argued that authors, who live with children on a daily basis,
might be too biased at times to create a realistic and balanced child narrator, for
one because of time limitations and secondly, because parenting authors are too
closely involved with their offspring. If an author finds raising his children
challenging and if his children cry a lot, then the author might develop a tendency
to reflect these assumed character traits in his novel. If this situation is the case, we
need to ask the question to what extent it is necessary to create a positive child
character. If the author’s impression of children is negative, then it is perfectly
legitimate to express this downbeat experience through writing.
48

Additionally, in the case where an author feels negatively about his

relationship to children, the writing process might help in the analysis of the
author’s domestic situation and qualify the parent’s own actions and put those into
perspective. In contrast, the opposite writing experience may also be triggered,
where a disappointed parent idolizes his child narrator, puts him in an
embellished adult-‐child relationship and bestows extraordinary talent and
understanding upon him. Yet, anew in this case, the writing process can help the
author to assimilate his experiences.
Furthermore, in relation to the author’s role in the creation of his child
narrator, we need to take into account that if an author has children, he might find
it challenging to attribute certain character traits or ways of thinking to his literary
figure, because he does not want to associate those thoughts with children and
more specifically, with children of his own. An author might not want to imagine
his child having thoughts in relation to sexual activity, drugs, racism or violence.
The parent’s reaction is comprehensible, because he has a responsibility towards
his children and wants to protect them from any harm. An author, who is carefree,
can draw from an unlimited resource of things that his child narrator might think,
say or do.
On the other hand, an author who is closely linked to a child, might be
especially prone to paying attention to the harm children can fall prey to and
render this knowledge an integral part of his text. If you are living with children
you might always ask them what they think of certain topics and check if they
understand or have notions of key ideas that you might want to integrate in your
novel. If an author is wondering, whether it is likely or not that a young person has
already made a specific experience, which the author wants to describe in his text,
then the writer can always ask the children in his surroundings. However, then
again, if an author asks children to share their opinion, the answers the author gets
are just representative for those consulted children and not for a whole age group.
The survey might be more reliable, than invented attitudes in fictional texts, but
those statements still fail to act as generally representative of children’s attitudes.
Donnelly Brian notes that

it is probably worth observing at this point that no writer ever actually reproduces
the precise details of the speech of an individual or a group at any given moment in
49

history. Speech in real life is marked by hesitations, repetitions, anacolutha and

non-‐semantic noises. No one, for example, supposes that any Elizabethan
nobleman ever spoke like Hamlet in the fluent and flexible blank verse of “To be or
not to be/That is the question” soliloquy.29

Creating a child narrator means that the author needs to pay attention to the
children’s language. Children are a social subculture, which is here not meant in a
negative way. However, the fact that children represent a micro-‐society of their
own implies that children have a partly self-‐contained language, too. Children
invent words of their own, declining a majority of verbs, for example, as regular
verbs, instead of noting the existence of irregular verbs. Children create their own
logic and verbal ticks are just one facet that embodies children’s reasoning.
However, earlier on, I have argued that children adopt adult behaviour and model
adult expressions. Consequently, constructing a child narrator, who displays
stereotypical childlike language is not a necessity, because an author can always
construct a background story that allows his narrator to articulate himself like an
adult.
Additionally, if we discuss the authenticity of child narrators, then we need
to ask the question, if child narrators ever display themselves as they really are or
if authors stick to the stereotypical idea that children are generally prone to lying
and that their novel, as a consequence, can also be full of contradiction, because we
as readers ignore the fact if the child narrator is meant by the author to appear as
lying and unreliable, or if the author is inconsistent in or uninformed about the
psychological reality of a child’s character. Schulock Anne points out that to the
reader the behaviour of a character seems real and authentic if there is an ‘internal
logic.’30 Consequently, it is irrelevant if a child narrator portrays his surroundings
the way he sees them, or if the author invents a child narrator acting outside of
general childlike behaviour, because the reader creates his own logic and
characterization of the narrator, as the reading process progresses. As a result, the
child narrator becomes as reliable as an adult narrator, because the outcome of the
reading process and the idea, which message has been transmitted at the end of

29 Donnelly, Brian. “Inventing a Voice: Irish Fiction from 1800.” The Harp 15 (2000): 65-‐74, 67.
30 Schulock, Anne. “In Praise of Precocious Narrators.” Themillions.com:
http://www.themillions.com/2010/07/in-‐praise-‐of-‐precocious-‐narrators.html– Further
references are included in the text (ASL).
50

the reading process, fully depends on the reader’s ability to construct a coherent
and conclusive realism, based on the information the narrator provides him with.
Consequently, expression, comprehension and response of reader and
narrator vary, according to age, social and ethnical background of the child
narrator, writer, and reader. When the writer stems from a culture where children
are perceived as naïve, then the story mirrors this attitude as well. So, the reader
who distinguishes between a realistic child narrator and an unrealistic one, is at
the same time negotiating a whole set of social attitudes and conventions. By
judging how an author portrays a child narrator, the reader is automatically also
judging the author’s background and his society’s attitude towards how to raise
and treat children. If the reader has made the same experiences in relation to child
behaviour and if the reader has the same attitude to child minding, then the reader
will find the child narrator realistic and entertain a more sympathetic relation to
the reading process and its characters, than as if the opposite had been the case.
However, if there is a discrepancy between the reader’s conception of childlike
behaviour and that of the writer, then the reader perceives the child narrator as
not viable, which also circumcises the poignancy of the novel’s message.
In the end, if we have a second look at the foregoing debate of what a child
really is and if we remember that the notion of ‘child’ can also be employed to
indicate a person’ s immaturity and carelessness, then we can also say that a
childless adult author, who has never had to take responsibility for another human
being, can also still be designated as a ‘child.’ This train of thought is of course a
cliché, but logically we would have to admit that since the idea of ‘the child’ is not
really definable, then a carefree adult, writing a book from a child’s perspective,
writes from his own perspective, because he has never learned how to think and
act like an adult. In that case, the author is freed from inventing his character’s
internal world, because he can use his own attitude as reference point.
Of course, the foregoing statement is exaggerated, but I want to use this
argument in order to illustrate that people’s realities and how each individual
defines his environmental truth varies from one person to the other’s personal
perception. When analyzing the role of the child narrator in Extremely Loud &
Incredibly Close and The Life Before Us, we need to bear in mind that the child
narrator’s voice serves a function, which we are going to dismantle. This function
51

influences the narrator’s attitudes and actions, while the author’s and our own
experiences, as readers determine our positive or negative perception of the
narrator as a convincing child, too.
If we assume that an author has created a narrator, who is a generally true-‐
to-‐life child, we need to assume that our child narrator ignores logic. He omits
information and the way he narrates is a stream of consciousness, jumping from
one topic to the other. Elinor Ochs points out that ‘narrative […] is a fundamental
means of making sense of experience’ (EO 19). On the one hand, the fact that the
narrator omits information is due to the fact that he lives in another reality than
adults. To an adult, work, family and income are of prior interest, while a child’s
world revolves around marks at school, the amount of friends he has, his security
at home and how other children treat him. In The Curious Incident of the Dog in The
Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, Christopher draws attention to the child’s concerns
in a conversation with his mother: ‘And I said, “I have to go back to Swindon.” And
mother said, “Christopher, you’ve only just got here.” And I said, “I have to go back
because I have to sit my Maths A level.”’31 When an adult reader is wondering why
information relevant to us as readers is left out, or why the child narrator expands
a specific, yet to the adult irrelevant, topic, then we need to revert back to a child’s
logic.
In the end, we need to ask ourselves if, when reading a novel featuring a
child narrator, we then look to understand the novel as the child, we once were or
as the adult we are now? The text can be read and interpreted on various levels
and thus, makes the text multidimensional. Of course, when we read a novel
written from an adult’s perspective, the reader can also try to interpret the book
on various levels. The reader can for example try to interpret the narrator or the
characters’ behaviour in relation to their childhood. Yet, when we read a text
narrated from another adult’s point of view, we will always judge as the adult we
currently are. When a novel is narrated from a child’s perspective, the reader has
the choice to view the book as a child’s construct and to try and remember how we
felt and acted as children.
However, the possibility to interpret the novel on different levels only
works, if the reader is aware of this option. It can also be the case that we

31 Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. London: Vintage. 2004, 246.
52

unconsciously read on various levels and use the best possible age level or frame
of mind, in order to understand the text, without us consciously trying to vary our
point of view during the reading process. Or the reader adopts one position to start
off with and keeps that position, either viewing the book from an adult’s
perspective or from a child’s perspective, but constantly remaining in the same
frame of mind. It would be interesting to see how a novel can consciously be
interpreted from different points of view, but then the conscious hunt for different
levels of meaning disrupts the light-‐hearted reading process.
Finally, Byron Almén argues that

it would seem that the two primary functions of the narrator are to 1) situate the
related events in the past, as having already occurred, and to 2) organize the plot
or story in a coherent manner. With respect to point 2, we have seen that the task
of making connections between events in a temporal sequence does not depend
essentially upon the presence of a narrator, that the reader/listener/observer may
play the primary role in this respect. If that is the case, then a narrator is not
required in order to provide coherence among events.32

In the novels featuring a child narrator that I have read so far, the child narrator
has always been a first-‐person narrator, who discovers his surroundings as he
progresses in the world. Unless the narrator turns at times into an omniscient
narrator and thus, switches between roles within the novel, he is bound to miss
out on information, because he falls short of constantly observing and analyzing all
the other characters in the novel. Yet, the child narrator is not necessarily meant to
relate to the events in his life in a linear manner, because also a child can have
flashbacks to past incidents in his life and a child can also plan ahead and
imaginarily construct his future. Thus, Byron Almén is right when he says that it
depends also on the reader to what extent the story or plot becomes a coherent
whole.
In the end, if we assume that children always partly embody their ancestors’
lives, we can say that child narrators manage to link their ancestors’ stories to the
present. Child narrators become a tool that highlights the idea that past narratives
are born from the lives of previous generations. Narratives are recurring in cycles

32 Almén, Byron. “Narrative Archetypes: A Critique, Theory, and Method of Narrative Analysis.”
Journal of Music Theory 47.1 (Spring 2003): 1-‐39, 8 – Further references are included in the text
(BA).
53

and no matter how small the source of a narrative might be in the beginning, the
story will always develop into a complex whole.
In conclusion, the device of the child narrator has only recently emerged in
literature as an independent device. However, it depends not just on the author
and on how he develops a child character, but the complexity of a character also
depends on the reader’s ability to interpret and construct a coherent child
narrator, based on the author’s input.

54

2.4. Adult Literature

Finally, if we want to have a look at the role of the child narrator in adult literature,
we need to define as well what we understand by the term ‘adult literature.’ When
we think of topics especially meant for adult readers, then sexual content
immediately springs to mind. So, if we assume that there is literature that does not
focus on sexual topics, but that can still be defined as adult literature, we need to
find a way of identifying adult literature, according to other standards.
In general, adult literature revolves around topics that are of interest to
adults, like inter-‐human relationships, children, financial hardship, travelling and
work related issues. At the same time, young adult literature focuses on topics like
first love, drugs and alcohol. Consequently, literature mirrors the problems and
worries and train of thoughts of those people that are reading those specific kinds
of books. The reading progress becomes a way of coming to terms with one’s own
problems and worries, because reading about people with the same background
and emotional swaying helps to put one’s own drawbacks and challenges into
perspectives. The reading process allows the reader to identify with the outside
world, which leads to the reader’s relativization of personal misery: if other people
have experienced and survived the same challenges, which I am living and
undergoing at the moment, I will be capable of coming to terms with my situation
as well. As a consequence, we can say that the novels we read indicate in which
direction our lives are headed, at a specific point in time, or which experiences we
want to process through reading. Of course, this conclusion is a generalization and
obviously does not apply to every reader, because people can also read all sorts of
texts out of a pure broad range of interest. Yet, in general people are intrigued by
those ideas that make their worlds go round and reading is a way of dealing with
problems, without having to discuss one’s personal concerns with other people.
Reading is a discrete self-‐help tool that caters for all kinds of concerns and fetishes.
Accordingly, the language level or the writing styles are secondary, when it
comes to distinguishing between different categories for target readerships. The
content of the novel defines, which age group the text caters for, in general. It is
logical that teenagers are more interested in topics like first love or schoolyard
bullying, than adults. However, identifying and defining a novel as belonging to the
category of adult fiction means that this novel is in general more sought after by
55

adult readers. Yet, teenagers can also show an interest in a novel stigmatized as
adult read, because it broaches the issue of a problem that a teenager is currently
faced with. Vice-‐versa, an adult can also be interested in a teenage read, when an
adult has to deal with teenage problems, as a parent or educator, for instance. In
that respect, not just a person’s private context, but also his work context defines,
which literature an individual consults.
Additionally, readers generally assume that adult novels deal with topics
that are more challenging to come to terms with and to process emotionally and
psychologically. Adults assume that children are not apt yet to read about
problems like violation, sexual abuse and unfaithfulness in relationships.
Consequently, novels dealing with those and similar problems are categorized as
adult novels. However, in the past, children read books that were originally
intended for an adult readership. Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist (1838) or Mark
Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) were primarily written for an
adult public. Robert Bruce explains that ‘Huck lies, cheats, steals, and defrauds his
way down the river. These traits are part of the reason that Huck Finn was viewed
as a book not acceptable for children.’33 However, in the nineteenth century,
children read the texts that were available in the household, because the parents
could not afford to buy new books and often only wealthy families possessed their
own copies anyway.
Moreover, children nowadays are confronted with much more graphic
violence and abuse on a daily basis, than children would be able to imagine, when
reading a novel, which focuses on the same set of problems. Consequently, the
difference between an adult novel and a children’s novel does not lie in how
appropriate or easily digestible the content is for a reader, but how much that
reader can draw from and develop, because of the reading process. A child reading
about marital unfaithfulness can understand the novel’s content, but he will not be
able to use the character’s conclusions or way of dealing with the challenges he is
facing, because the setting is miles apart from his own childlike worldview. In
contrast though, a child of divorced parents, who reads about marital problems,
might still find it challenging to understand all the adult worries and qualms, yet
the reading process might lead to the child’s realization that there are further

33 Bruce, Robert. Cliffs Notes On Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. N.Y.: Wiley Publishing. 2000, 81.
56

couples and families, who have to live through similar experiences and as a
consequence, the child refrains from blaming himself as the source of the parents’
separation, which is an attitude that children commonly adopt in divorce cases.
In contrast, an adult reading a children’s novel has the necessary experience
in order to interpret more into a text, than there might actually be. For example,
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (1997) focuses on the life of a wizard child. In
general, in terms of content, we would say that these texts are classical children’s
novels, because they revolve around a reality that stimulates children’s fantasy and
creativity and that is devoid of inappropriate material that children have no need
for and which they cannot process, according to a lack of experience. However, it is
a fact that J.K. Rowling’s novels also attract a broad adult readership. On the one
hand, the fantastic elements in Harry Potter that stimulate the children’s dreams
also stimulate adult musing and catapult us back into a time, when life was less
cluttered with responsibility and when we did not need to pretend yet, that we are
cultured and educated and that we can read and understand complex literary texts.
On the other hand, adults have the necessary experience to identify friction
and show of power between characters, which turns the children’s novel into a
metaphor for the adult world. Consequently, one text can be understood and
interpreted on different levels, according to the reader’s needs, experience and
degree of intelligence. The difference in defining a novel as adult novel or as
children’s novel lies in finding the age category for which a novel generally offers
the most emotional and psychological support.
According to our theory, novels featuring child narrators would then in
general be less interesting for adult readers, because the story is told from a child’s
perspective and centres on the child’s daily problems. However, those stories like
The Life Before Us and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close do centre on children’s
lives, but their settings are very specific. The overall topics of these novels revolve
around drug abuse, prostitution, terrorism and family secrets, which are all issues
that adults need to process and find answers for. Of course, a child who has lost his
father in 9/11 like Oskar in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, will be able to
retrace the train of thought of the protagonist much better than an adult reader,
who has never even been to America. This fact illustrates that categorizing novels
as adult novels or as children’s novels is always just a generalization and varies
57

from person to person. Additionally, it depends on the novel’s potential for

interpretation and on the reader’s capacity for understanding, in order to turn a
children’s novel into an adult read.
In the end, after having defined the terms of child, child narrator, adult and
children’s literature, we might also want to ask the question, if it is easier for a
writer to invent a child narrator for an adult novel or whether it is easier to come
up with a child narrator, for a children’s novel. First, on the one hand, we can say
that writing for a specific audience of children demands an adapted lexis, because,
depending on the child’s age, its lexis is still little developed. Yet, on the other hand,
the author can write in the same way and use the same words, independently of
the reader’s age. Even if a child does not know the meaning of all the words it is
reading, the child can still figure out the meaning of the words through context,
which is similar when a person learns a foreign language. Additionally, parents
also speak in the same way with their children, as they speak with each other. So,
why would a writer need to adapt his literary language?
Finally, there are a number of children’s classics that were primarily
intended as adult texts. The only difference that I can think of is that adults might
demand a more complex writing style and more advanced or challenging thinking
or lexis, whereas children do not get caught up in questions of style, when they
assess a novel’s quality. Children focus much more on the creativity of a text, than
on the potential challenge and intellectual development a text may offer. Thus, one
could say that children are less pretentious, when they choose which text they
want to read. Children can simply pick a text, independently of its high literary
appeal, whereas adults often choose novels that seem appropriate for their status
in society.

58

3. Critical Thinking: The Child Narrator’s Effect

In the foregoing debate, we have defined the key terms that are relevant for our
research thesis. Yet, the most crucial matter remains the question why an author
would choose a child narrator as the transmitter of his message and why would an
adult want to read a story told by a person younger than himself? Surely, children’s
vocabulary and character are less complex? Henry James has argued that

the children’s vision is at any moment richer, their apprehension even constantly
stronger, than their prompt, their at all producible, vocabulary. Amusing therefore
as it might at first blush have seemed to restrict myself in this case to the terms as
well as to the experience, it became at once plain that such an attempt would fail.
(TT 208)

As a consequence, Henry James has supported his character Maisie in What Maisie
Knew (1897) with ‘his own commentary [that] constantly attends and amplifies’
(TT 208) the child’s worldview. In What Maisie Knew, the author’s persona intrudes
on the story and the writer, as the origin of the text, becomes palpable for the
reader. So, if an author like Henry James has shied away from the technique of
presenting a narrative from a pure child perspective, then which assets constitute
the appeal of a child narrator? What makes the child narrator’s role advantageous
for adult literature? Or, on the other hand, what are the disadvantages and
drawbacks of fiction narrated in a child’s voice. Those are the key questions
discussed in the following paragraphs.
First of all, when we talk about advantages and disadvantages in relation to
narrating a story from a child’s point of view, we need to specify what kind of
benefit or shortcomings we are talking about and for whom. Firstly, are there any
advantages or disadvantages for the author, when creating a child character and
narrator as opposed to an adult narrator? Is it possible that a child can transmit
the author’s message more precisely and to the point than an adult narrator? Or
does the message come to lack poignancy, when the narrator is a child?
Secondly, what are the advantages or drawbacks for the reader, when the
story is told from a child’s perspective? Can the reader identify with a child
character and narrator at all? Does the intellectual level of the narrative still
stimulate the reader’s interest when a child tells the story?
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And finally, can the child in real life benefit in any way, when children are in
the focus of fictional texts or does the child’s status suffer any negative
consequences after a book featuring a child narrator has been published? Does
literature, which depicts the child’s social situation, influence the broader public
attitude and behaviour at all?
We are going to discuss the forgoing questions, according to their
advantages or disadvantages in relation to broader topics, like the child narrator’s
influence on the literary appeal of the novel, on the characters’ complexity and on
the development of moral questions, rather than alternately looking at the
advantages or disadvantages for author, reader and child.
To begin with, books narrated by children have the advantage that the
author can naturally render quirky pictures, drawings or cartoons part of his
novel. Usually, if adult novels narrated by adults contain illustrations, then they
present the world from a grown-‐up’s point of view. In a novel, narrated by a child
though, the author needs to make sure to present the pictures and illustrations
from a child’s perspective. At this point, the question is raised to what extent one
can distinguish if a drawing was made by a child or an adult and what exactly is a
child’s perspective? Adult drawings are just as often scrawly and in disproportion
as art that was created by children. If we imagine though that we have one and the
same picture, once being presented and discussed by an adult narrator and once
by a child narrator, then the difference lies in what is said about the picture and
how the discussion develops and not in the picture’s content. In Extremely Loud &
Incredibly Close for instance, the author has included pictures of doorknobs and of
elevator buttons, because those items are at the child’s eye level on a daily basis.
These inconspicuous, but essential, everyday objects remind the reader that we as
adults have often lost our ability to pay attention to detail. Adults take most of
their environment for granted and wonder very rarely about everyday items;
where do these objects come from? Do we really need them? Are we grateful for
their existence or could we discard them and declutter our lives? In general,
children ask more questions about their environment, than adults. Children have
the ability to question people, events and experiences, because lots of the young
people’s encounters with the world are new and children have less reference
points to compare their experiences with. Readers generally find it more
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acceptable when children marvel and wonder about everyday objects. An adult
drawing attention to the beauty in the common appears melancholic and dreamy.
On the other hand, children do not necessarily wonder more about their
environment than we as adults do. Yet, as already mentioned before, children have
the ability to discuss our surrounding world on a different level than grown-‐ups,
because young people are interested in a different reality and consequently in
different answers than adults.
Additionally, the author can also use the visual material figuratively, in
order to show that the text’s message can be transmitted on different levels. In
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer has included the picture of
a doorknob, as already mentioned. On a first level, the photograph shows the
reader what Oskar sees when he visits different people throughout the story.
Oskar is smaller than an adult and so, Oskar does not stand face to face with the
grown-‐ups he meets, but his height automatically renders him inferior to the
adults he meets.
Moreover, the picture of the doorknob shows the reader that Oskar is not
just physically smaller than an adult, but the photograph also highlights the child’s
limited understanding of the events in the story. The visualization of Oskar’s height
emphasises his relatively small impact on the adult world.
In addition, the picture that Jonathan Safran Foer has chosen represents an
extravagant, old-‐fashioned doorknob. The reader associates the visual material
with other items that he has come across in his life. Thus, in his imagination, the
reader supports his understanding of the story, by associating the visual material
in the text with previous similar impressions that he has come across in real life.
Consequently, the reader can expand the story’s scope on the basis of the visual
material that is included in the book, without the author’s interference.
Finally, in a figurative way, the picture of the doorknob also shows that the
child’s encounter with different people allows him to grow throughout the story:
the more doors the child narrator opens on his journey, the more he will
emotionally, physically, and psychologically develop as time passes by. An adult
narrator can convey the same impression, because to what extent a text can be
interpreted on a figurative level vastly depends on the reader’s understanding and
ability for interpretation and not solely on the text itself.
61

According to Elinor Ochs,

narratives are not usually monomodal, but rather they integrate two or more
communicative modes. Visual representation, gesture, facial expression and
physical activity, for example, can be combined with talk, song, or writing to
convey a tale. These blendings characterize narratives in a wide array of settings
and communities. […] Visual art forms tell a story along a continuum of
condensation and abstraction. A story may be told across a sequence of pictures, as
in cave art, or condensed into a single frame, which can be unpacked using a
singular form of narrative literacy.34

Elinor Ochs points out that narratives are usually multimodal. Yet, on the one hand,
the written narrative remains first monomodal, because it is based on writing and
is first, a self-‐contained narrative. Fiction becomes only multimodal, when the
writer decides to accompany his writing with pictures and to visually illustrate his
words.
On the other hand, Elinor Ochs is right in her assumption that each
narrative is multimodal, when we admit that the reading process triggers visual
representations in the reader’s mind and thus, leads to a transcribed form of
multimodality. When a reader has the liberty to create his own mental images,
which illustrate the words on the page, then the idea of multimodality adopts an
even more profound dimension, because the reader is free to create his own visual
narrative, based on the author’s story. Consequently, one single narrative form
expands and adopts different shapes, depending on the reader’s independent
creative and imaginary capacity.
Furthermore, while one narrative form expands and adopts various other
representative shapes, the contrary can also happen, where a multitude of
narrative levels condense into a single frame. A biography, for example, is the
literary condensation of a life led through pictures, relationships, voice, and facial
expressions. In the end, a written biography combines all those representative
modes and visualizes a life as words on a page.
Moreover, one and the same narrator can use different kinds of media, in
order to express one and the same narrative in different ways. An author can, for
example, capture his biography as written words on a page, but the author can also
compile a picture book, which shows his life through a sequence of photographs

34 Ochs, Elinor and Lisa Capps. “Narrating the Self.” Annual Review of Anthropology 25 (1996): 19-‐
43, 20 – Further references are included in the text (EO).
62

and illustrations, from his earliest years to the present date. These narrative forms
are only two possible shapes that a narrator can choose, in order to give a tangible
shape to an otherwise elusive idea: if I think about writing a biography, for
example, then this idea remains intangible, until I use a kind of media of my choice,
like writing, which allows me to capture my idea and to turn it into a tangible
object, like a book.
Additionally, blendings of different representative modes do not only
characterize different communities and settings, but multimodal narratives also
reach a wider audience, because when words fail to communicate meaning, when
reader and writer do not share the same language, then visual illustrations manage
to convey an equally accurate message. Small children, for example, who cannot
read yet, manage to understand the stories their picture books tell them, because
toddlers are used to a basic level of visual representation. In a child’s case, the
picture book story can also be accompanied by the mother’s oral narrative that
offers further explanations and creative padding, in support of the story’s visual
level. The mother telling her child a story based on pictures, also illustrates the
idea that one mode of communication can expand and adopt another shape,
depending on the reader or on the audience in general. A written text, which is
read out, also becomes multimodal.
Moreover, the idea of the mother constructing a narrative based on a
sequence of pictures, highlights Elinor Ochs’ idea that ‘a single frame can be
unpacked through literacy.’ The mother is orally transmitting the message the
pictures convey to her. A different mother might understand the same images in a
different way and spin a different story, based on the pictures. Consequently,
allocating meaning to one narrative form and turning one mode of illustration into
another, depends on the person who does the deconstruction and later
reconstruction of the ideas at hand.
Yet, the written narrative is the one mode that allows people to share their
interpretation of an experience with a wider audience. If people orally discuss a
piece of art, for example, then exchange is of course taking place, but this
discussion remains limited to the world of a restricted number of people. When we
record a debate on paper though, the discussed ideas remain accessible for future
examination by different people, or by future generations.
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Finally, narrative forms adopt various shapes and one narrative form brings
about another, depending on the audience. Yet, a combination of narrative modes
is what leads to the most accurate transmission and understanding of the message
that the sender intends to convey.
Additionally, in relation to the visual material that an author uses in order
to reinforce his written message, we need to ask the question whether the type of
visual material that an author chooses for his novel depends on the narrator’s
character or not. First, the writer has a certain image in mind, when he creates the
story’s narrator. Consequently, the writer consciously or unconsciously chooses
visual material that he associates with his literary figure and that highlights the
narrator’s nature, according to the author. Thus, on the one hand, the material that
a writer picks, in order to visualize his texts, depends on the attitude and character
that the narrator displays.
On the other hand, the image a writer has in mind, when he creates his child
narrator, is not necessarily identical to the reader’s visualization of the story’s
narrator. The reader has also an individual conception of the narrator in mind. As a
consequence, the reader can perceive the visual material included in a novel as
contradictory to the narrator’s nature or the reader fails to make the association
between narrator and visual material. On the other hand again, it can be the case
that the author has a different initial understanding of the narrator, but that the
visual material helps to mould the reader’s interpretation and understanding of
the narrator along the lines of the visual material that the author has chosen or the
reader interprets the visual material according to the narrator’s character as he
has understood it.
Moreover, there is also the question whether the visual material that an
author includes in his text changes, depending on the narrator’s age and function.
On the one hand, the visual material serves a purpose of its own, because the visual
material speaks to the reader on a different level than the written word. Pictures
and drawings are meant to introduce the fact that there are different levels of
reality and that a person can look at a problem or question from different
perspectives. In that case, the author either chooses pictures that are shot from a
child’s perspective, in order to confront the reader with the child’s outlook on the
world. Or, the author includes pictures that mirror an adult’s reality and thus,
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manages to highlight the contrast between a child and an adult perspective. In that
case, the child’s perspective reaches the reader as words on the page and the adult
perspective adopts the form of the visual material. Thus, the discrepancy between
the adult and the child’s world would also adopt a figurative dimension, because
the two worlds or attitudes are represented via two different kinds of media.
However, the fact that the novel includes both, text and pictures, shows that adult
and child perspective can and need to work together, in order to form a coherent
and complex whole. So, even if the narrator’s age or function changes, the visual
material is still intended to highlight various levels of interpretation and
understanding that a story can adopt and thus, the function of the visual material
remains established, independently of the narrator.
On the other hand, the content of the visual material can change according
to the child narrator’s age and function, if the author wants to transmit a different
message, than the one discussed in the foregoing paragraph. When the author
intends to underline that his central figure has a specifically pronounced tick for
example, then the author arranges the visual material in his story in such a way
that the chosen pictures support the child narrator’s character. This approach is
for example the case in Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-Time. Christopher, the child character in Mark Haddon’s novel, has
Asperger’s Syndrome and his disposition renders him talented at maths.
Consequently, the visual material included in the novel encompasses mathematical
formula and symmetrical shapes, which visualize Christopher’s way of looking at
and categorizing his surroundings.
Finally, the question remains whether the reader senses the author as the
selector of the novel’s images or whether the reader feels as if he is confronted
with a child’s point of view. The answer to this question depends on the idea to
what extent the reader is immersed in the story and manages to identify with the
novel’s main character. When a reader cannot fully identify with a text or with its
message, then the reader will start to question the pictures included in the text,
too. At the same time, as a consequence of the reader’s resistance to take the novel
at face value, the reader also starts to question the novel’s message and the
characters’ authenticity. So, as soon as the reader starts to feel the author’s
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presence as the origin of the chosen visual material, then the reader also begins to
question the text as a whole.
In conclusion, on a first level, the child narrator manages to present visual
material differently than an adult narrator and a child narrator can attribute
different levels of interpretation to pictures. The child’s perspective illustrates that
there is a reality different to our adult perception. In When We Were Romans,
Lawrence says: ‘Its all ruins, there are just a few columns and walls so I thought
“this is boring” but actually that was wrong, you must close your eyes and use your
imagination you see.’35 Literally looking from a different perspective at the world
surrounding us, helps the reader to question his own perception of the world. Of
course, if the narrator was an adult, he could also outline and highlight a reality
contrasting our own, by viewing and discussing problems from a different
perspective. However, children draw our attention to our surroundings,
highlighting the extraordinary in the ordinary, whereas another adult figure shares
our level of perception from a different angle, instead of from a different level and
varied angle. The child’s perspective reminds the reader that our understanding of
the world is not universal and propagates tolerance and understanding of
otherness.
Additionally, children are confronted with different kinds of media than
adults and accordingly, their worldview is different from ours. Children watch
children’s TV and read books for children, which often also include illustrations.
Consequently, an author who includes pictures in his novel puts the adult reader
on a child’s level, because the author relegates the adult reader into a child’s shoes,
by offering adult literature under a form similar to children’s literature.
Of course, nowadays children are more and more confronted with a world
of media that is not tailored to children’s needs. In that case, children have to cope
with a reality that is beyond their understanding. Adult novels narrated by
children, take this aspect into account too. The pictures included in the novels
represent situations or items that children need to deal with, because life confronts
them with unknown situations, but which young people find it hard to make sense
of. In Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer includes pictures of a

35 Kneale, Matthew. When We Were Romans. London: Picador. 2008, 59 – Further references are
included in the text (MK).

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man jumping from the Twin Towers on 9/11. Those pictures show a real life
situation and are not drawn by a child’s hand. Consequently, the view that the
adult reader and the child narrator share is identical. In this case, the child’s
perspective does not introduce a new aspect to the discussion, in terms of how the
outlook on the world varies from adult to child. In the case of Jonathan Safran
Foer’s novel, the shocking pictures of 9/11 are meant to remind the reader of the
fact that children are confronted with the same current or worldly events and that
children are also confronted in an unfiltered way with adult media tailored to adult
understanding.
Moreover, Elinor Ochs has argued that ‘a story may be told across a
sequence of pictures.’ Jonathan Safran Foer uses a sequence of nearly identical
pictures, in order to tell the story of Oskar’s past and of America’s past. Thus, visual
images can (combine and) reduce a broader narrative to a minimum. An image is a
condensed narrative that can be interpreted in a broader variety of ways, than
words written on a page. On the one hand, the author condenses the narrative and
squeezes it into a single shape. On the other hand, the author unpacks the
narrative that the image contains, in order to construct a new, elaborate narrative,
based on the visual representation and on the reader’s understanding of the image.
Additionally, we can ask the question whether there actually should be a
world especially tailored for children’s needs, because it is only through
confrontation with reality that young people learn how to deal with realism. The
way a child reacts to a shocking truth, like the death of parent, like in Jonathan
Safran Foer’s novel, also depends on the options the child is given to process an
experience. In Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, there is a series of pictures of the
man falling from the Twin Towers. The pictures are arranged in such a way that
they form a flipbook. When the reader flips through the pages, it looks like the man
in the pictures is not falling from the building, but ascending. In this case, the
author has managed to show that children see the same surroundings as adults,
but that young people manage to distort reality in such a way that it becomes
bearable. Adult imagination is stifled and limited by their knowledge of what is
physically possible or impossible. A child’s perspective and interpretation of the
world helps the adult reader to remember how to fall back onto his creativity, in
order to solve problems or in order to reconstruct a personal identity. Thus, having
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said earlier on that the successful processing of a negative experience depends on
the person’s surroundings and the offered support, we can add that overcoming
grief also depends on one’s own ability to see the beneficial or comical in each
situation and to grow through and because of that incident, independent of a
person’s age.
Moreover, by witnessing how challenging the everyday world is for other
people, the reader comes to accept his own personal challenges as common
experiences. The reading process triggers the positive psychological effect that the
reader learns to give up on his perfectionism, even if the narrator is a child and
when it is accepted for children to find the world challenging. Most important is
that there is a human being facing and overcoming a challenge. The fact that it is a
child becomes secondary. Elinor Ochs points out that

self-‐understandings do not always take the form of soothing narrative solutions to
life’s dilemmas. Rather, narratives may illuminate life as we know it by raising
challenging questions and exploring them from multiple angles. Although they
sometimes deceive, narrators may also probe beneath the surface of phenomena
and take interlocutors on an “adventurous journey toward a deeper
understanding, or rather to a new and deeper question, of ourselves in the world.”
While narrative does not yield absolute truth, it can transport narrators and
audiences to more authentic feelings, beliefs, and actions and ultimately to a more
authentic self. (EO 23)

An authentic self, as Elinor Ochs describes it, does not only imply that a person
understands his surroundings and is understood by his environment, but being
authentic also means that a person knows his own self and acts upon it. The
reading process allows each individual to get in touch with different life
experiences and truths in a condensed form. A life is too short in order to
personally explore all life’s adventures. Thus, reading about and dealing with
different forms of realism, even if it is a fictive reality, allows the reader to get to
know his preferences, his interests and his reactions better. Thus, the reader’s
confrontation with a child narrator grants the reader access to an additional
dimension in life; a dimension that people tend to forget or to deliberately put in
the background, because at some point we need to act like adults do according to
social norm. Yet, in order to live an authentic life, it is necessary for the individual
to confront his childhood experiences in his own right and to learn from the past.
Reading and seeing the world from a child narrator’s perspective allows the reader
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to revisit his former self or to compare his past self to a different child version and
to reconstruct his adult identity, based on the re-‐evaluated conception that a
person had of himself.
Another advantage of having a child narrator is that children are less
influenced and their actions and speech are less restricted by social norms and
conventions. A child’s way of life is uncluttered by adult perception and thus, the
child observes its environment unfiltered, by the idea of what one should observe
and what one should overlook, according to stereotypical social conventions. The
child narrator becomes the author’s tool that allows the writer to point out and
comment on social shortcomings. In that situation, the reader perceives a child
that tries to make sense of a world that is unknown to him, whereas an adult
character commenting on social shortcomings is understood as overtly critical of
society. A child is still protected by stereotypical adult assumptions. Adults believe
that the child is naïve and finds it challenging to understand his surrounding
world. A child is allowed to ask questions, whereas an adult asking questions is
often frowned at or laughed at for his ignorance or, in contrast, for his
intrusiveness. Of course, children can also take their environment for granted. The
child who points out social shortcomings turns unconsciously into a moral
instance, but the adult reader is more willing to accept and contemplate the child’s
words, than adult criticism. The child’s evaluation of the situation is pronounced
without any judgment, because often the child does not know what the adult
words or thoughts he imitates really imply.
On the one hand, the argument, which says that children are freer to
express themselves, because they are unaware of and thus, less restricted, by
conventions and social norms, is true. In contrast though, children are more easily
manipulated, because children crave their surroundings’ attention. Children
mirror the adult world, because they want to belong to the group and gain the
adults’ approval. This observation leads to the reader’s insecurity, because an adult
can never be sure whether an incident narrated by a child is a pure observation or
whether the child narrates a story the way his parents would narrate it, because
the child mirrors his surroundings and says what he thinks his parents would like
to hear.
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On the other hand, every narrative, whether told from a child’s or an adult’s
perspective, is influenced by the desire to convince or impress the reader.
Consequently, reality is often twisted to such an extent that the audience buys into
the story’s truthfulness. Nobody can detach himself from the desire to partly cater
for what we deem to be other people’s expectations of us.
Additionally, the child is also unaware that the situations he observes are
amoral or ethically doubtful. According to Schapiro Tamar,

the point is merely that, in general, we do not feel bound by children’s expressions
of their wills in the same way that we feel bound by adults’ expression of theirs.
Second, we tend not to hold children responsible for what they do in the same way
that we hold adults responsible for their actions. This is no to say that we don’t
hold children responsible for their actions in any sense. But the knowledge that an
agent is a child rather than an adult often promotes us to modify our “reactive
attitudes” toward her. An adult who laughs at your bald spot is to be resented; a
child who does the same is to be disciplined – at least insofar as you decide to treat
her as a child. In this sense, we do not take child action as seriously as adult action,
or, rather, we do not take it seriously in the same way. (TS 717)

In the beginning, the reader thinks that the child narrator is the puppet of the
writer. The narrator transmits the message of the author and the child in the novel
obeys the adult writer’s orders, just as children in the real world obey their elders.
However, the reader is unconscious of the fact that he himself becomes the puppet
of the child narrator, who becomes the puppeteer of his readership. If we as
readers are reluctant to listen to the author’s message, let us say in a TV interview,
then we are the ones absorbing the child narrator’s words and contemplating his
ideas during the reading process and hence, we listen to the author’s hidden
criticism. The child’s words that the reader does not take seriously, according to
Shapiro Tamara, are in reality the words of an adult and should provoke the
reader’s reaction. Of course, there is also the production of a reaction, but the
reaction to a child narrator is different than that to an adult narrator, although the
word’s source, namely the author, is identical.
Moreover, on the one hand, a child’s honesty and his ability to criticize his
environment openly on the grounds of honest ignorance make the child character
more vulnerable, because inferiority in understanding and education make people
and characters prone to criticism and deceit. When an author puts his own child
character in an inferior position, then he allows the reader to ignore any criticism
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voiced by the child, because the reader might not take the child seriously and
prefer to ignore any comments and to discount them as childish and unworthy of
any adult attention, because the reader does not want to be confronted with an
uncomfortable reality.
Secondly, another positive aspect of having a child narrator is the idea that
the author attributes a voice to those people that adopt a secondary social status
and often go unheard. Elinor Ochs remarks that ‘narrative also interfaces self and
society, constituting a crucial resource for socializing emotions, attitudes, and
identities, developing interpersonal relationships, and constituting membership in
community’ (EO 19). This statement sounds stereotyped and banal, because in our
modern world media and publicity is all about giving a voice to the discarded
members of society. Yet, Elinor Ochs’ statement is true, when we look at the idea
that each narrative draws people and worlds closer together. The reading
experience allows an exchange of information and of attitudes and thus, the reader
is more or less forced to adopt a perspective, and in our case a child perspective,
contrasting his own. In the case of a book written from a child’s perspective, the
reader automatically forms a relation with the child character, because reader and
narrator regularly meet during the reading process. Consequently, there is an
approximation or even convergence between two different social and
psychological positions that take place.
On the other hand, I have said that the reader is more or less forced to deal
with a worldview different to his own, when the reader picks up a novel narrated
from a child’s perspective. Of course the reader has the choice to discard the novel
that he has chosen and decide on reading another text. Yet, the reader’s conscious
decision against the confrontation with a child’s reality, or with any other reality
that does not correspond with his own worldview, leads to a debate as well. When
a reader rejects a novel, he consciously or unconsciously asks himself, why the
book did not appeal to him and by asking these questions, the reader is also
discussing and analyzing part of his attitude and of his self. Thus, the reading
process and/ or the rejection of a particular type of novel both lead to a
confrontation of the author with his own attitudes, desires and points of view.
Additionally, if an author intends to give a voice to the children in this
world, who go without a say, then the author needs to make sure that he endows
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his child narrator with an authentic childlike voice that lacks grammatical accuracy
and that includes the ticks of the child’s age group. Of course, voice is more than
tone of voice. Voice also stands for the words, expressions and moments in time a
character uses in order to narrate his story. The advantage of attributing an adult
voice to a child character is that mature comments are sweetened, by childlike
expressions. Children invent their own language and so it seems only adequate
that an insightful, wise comment should be made in a unique tone of voice.
Matthew Kneale uses a specific childlike writing style to support the voice of his
child narrator also visually. In his novel When We Were Romans, Matthew Kneale
disregards adult grammar rules and spelling for the benefit of visualizing the
child’s thoughts:

This was bad, mum was scratching her arm now, so I thought “I must help her or
she will fall down into a big hole.” Suddenly I really hated that theif36, I wished we
hadn’t sat in a row because then I would have seen him, I would have shouted out
really loudly and frightened him away, I would have run after him and got the
police to put him in jail forever, I would blow him up, I would do a Caligulla. I said
“wait here mum, I will go and ask Jeener” so I ran into the bar really fast, but it
didn’t do any good, she didn’t understand me because she could only speak Italian,
she just put up her hands like she was surrendering and said “banyo?” which
means loo. (MK 77)

On the one hand, this paragraph shows that children can convey a message just as
adequate and effectively to a readership, without paying attention to the
correctness of names and spelling. Additionally, the narrator invents the
expression ‘to Caligula someone,’ and even if a reader is not informed about the
context, everyone understands by the tone attributed to this expressions that it
alludes to a punishing action.
Matthew Kneale’s text also highlights that at some point in the reading
process it does not matter, if a story is told from a child’s perspective or from an
adult perspective, because it is the understanding between two people that
matters and not their age. In the story, the Italian waitress cannot understand
Lawrence, because she just speaks Italian and he English. The waitress assumes
that the child needs to go to the bathroom. Consequently, the story highlights
people’s expectations of each other. The waitress would not spontaneously assume

36 The spelling mistakes in the paragraphs taken from When We Were Romans are Matthew Kneale’s
choice and not typing mistakes (sic).

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that the mother’s handbag was robbed and that the child is now in charge of the
situation, because the mother is too baffled and confused to take any action. Thus,
the play with how the text is visually portrayed underlines the discrepancy
between the child’s age and his mature way of thinking and acting. In stories told
by child narrators, the child’s voice that takes over the narrative indicates that the
adults lack the words or the power to transmit their message or any message at all.
So it is the child who assumes the role of the grown up, both through voice and
action:

I told her “give me that piece (sic) of paper with their address, give me the guide
book” and she did, she just did what I said, I think it was because she was sad. I
tried to find their street on the map but it was hard, I don’t really know maps and
the streets all just went round and round like a big jumble. So I thought “uhih what
will I do?” then I thought “I know I will ask somebody.” Mum was just standing
there not looking at anything, it was like she was asleep or something, so I went in
a bar and asked the man. (MK 86/ 87)

Although Lawrence is trapped in an unfamiliar situation with a mother who is
acting really strangely, the child manages to overcome his reserve and approach
strangers for help, even though he does not speak their language. If an author
chooses to put a child at the centre of his narrative, the writer needs to make sure
that the child has a specific voice of his own and dares to act independently, when
the adult world comes to a stand still. Certainly, unusual situations demand
unusual behaviour and maybe it is people’s survival instinct that drives them on,
when there is looming danger. So, maybe it is too exaggerated to say that the child
is taking up the position of the adult, because maybe the child is just acting
naturally conscientious, when the family is confronted with a dangerous situation.
Yet, what we can say is that Matthew Kneale manages to portray the decay of the
adult world, without stifling the flow of his narrative. The child character is
affected by the events in the story, but he remains enough of an unaffected
outsider to comment on the situation, from a fresh perspective and to drive the
story on, by acting independently. If a family drama was told from an adult’s point
of view, then that adult would need to be an omniscient narrator that remains
outside the story, in order for the narrative to continue smoothly. If the narrator
were a first person narrator and involved in the relationship drama, then the
characters’ speechlessness, when confronted with their lives’ disaster, could not be
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conveyed as truthfully as possible, since the characters would need to voice their
feelings or points of view. In When We Were Romans, the mother going insane is
much better portrayed through Lawrence’s eyes, because the child observes the
gradual decay, without fully being able to grasp its extent. This situation or
observation allows the growth of suspense within the story, because the reader
really senses the mother’s silence as the expression of helplessness and confusion,
which it is.
Moreover, a majority of the children that remain unheard by society are
mostly those children that grow up in poverty and that cannot enjoy a proper
education. Consequently, if an author wants to give an authentic voice to socially
deprived children, then the author needs to take into account language ticks or
expressions that belong and identify lower social classes. The author’s dilemma
highlights the child’s inferiority even more. Yet, Tanner Tony suggests that while
Henry James ‘could not content himself with the poverty and simplicity of a child’s
“producible vocabulary” […] Clemens saw that such unliterary approximations
might be made to yield a new lyrical intensity, made to hit a new note of emotional
accuracy and sincerity’ (TT 209). Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, is
right by pointing out the accurate observational dimension that a child’s linguistic
lack can add to the narrative. Through the narrator’s language, the reader can
identify which social class and which age group the narrator belongs to. Language
identifies people and links them to their background. Consequently, Clemens is
right when he says that the accurate use of specific language features yields an
emotional dimension, because language discloses a person’s background and
upbringing and hence, exposes his emotional roots.
Moreover, everyone has already been confronted with a situation that left
him speechless. Yet, while an adult struggles to find the right words to express his
distress, a child remains accurately and appropriately silent, because that is the
way of expression he is forcibly used to, because he lacks the accurate words
anyway. Thus, the child arrives at accepting and mirroring the situation, which he
has to deal with, in a more accurate way than an adult, because of current
developmental shortcomings. In that respect, the child’s linguistic disadvantage
turns into a poetical asset.
Moreover, Tony Tanner points out that
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if we push a little deeper for the difference between James and Clemens, we can
see that James disliked the vernacular because it was the expression of an area of
society fundamentally uncivilized. Clemens knew this area well and say artistic
needs and potentialities where James discerned only barbarism. (TT 209)

Nowadays, children are more and more encouraged to make up their own mind
and to become autonomous, in acting and in thinking, which means that there is no
real need to create a platform, where children defend their needs, because they
already have a say of their own and parents, teachers, politicians and psychologists
hear the young people anyway. Yet, this positive social development remains still a
phenomenon, which is limited to developed and educated societies, like in Henry
James’ times. Socially and financially challenged people do not have the time or
energy to listen to and fulfil all of their offspring’s dreams and needs. Thus, Mark
Twain is right in his observation that there is potential talent slumbering in those
people that cannot afford to spend time on the refinement of their linguistic
abilities, whether they are adults or children. In that respect, expressing the world
in such a way that it corresponds with one’s daily experiences is also an artistic
expression, because it preserves the social authenticity that so many artists strive
to create or integrate in their work. In this respect, it remains a timeliness to
address social problems from a child’s perspective, because the child reflects his
reality the way it is, by using the linguistic and behaviourist patterns that he is
confronted with on a daily basis. Topics like prostitution, financial hardship and
violence are considered as problems created by adults and as being solved by
adults. Authors like Romain Gary or Jonathan Safran Foer though, illustrate the
feelings or experience of children living in socially challenging situations, by
discussing, accessing, and deciphering them from a child’s vantage point.
Drawing attention to the child’s minor status in society helps to interest
people in situations demanding improvement and motivates the reader to act in a
supportive way, given that the novel’s message is poignant, truthful and shocking
enough to call forth the reader’s compassion and make him act upon his feelings. In
that case, children benefit, when a book is written from a child’s perspective,
because readers could be motivated enough to create foundations, to make
donations or to invest at least more time looking more closely at the silent
suffering of the young people surrounding him, in order to help children in need
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At the same time, the author can also benefit when he draws the readers’
attention to the current deficits in childcare, because social engagement attracts
social recognition and public approval. The author’s positive public status has
repercussions on the number of books he sells and on how any criticism towards
him is voiced. In turn, the author’s high social status helps him to connect with
people, who are influential enough to create foundations or to raise money, in
order to help children in need. Thus, an author, who focuses on children’s needs
and enlightens his contemporary world about children’s social shortcomings, lays
the foundation for personal and social profit and success.
On the one hand, this positive effect is beneficial for the growing appeal of
fiction. On the other hand, the author uses a child narrator under the pretext of
attributing a voice to those unheard. In that situation, the child turns yet again out
to be abused by the adult, in order for the adult to reach his literary or social
target. It is of secondary matter, if the author was genuinely interested in drawing
positive attention to the child’s status in society and to the child’s worldview. The
aftertaste that remains is that of a child abused by an adult for the transmission of
an adult’s message in the world of the grown-‐ups. If we were pessimistic, we
would say that the child remains the weakest link in society and is prone to adult
abuse, independently of the adult’s intention.
Another asset, which enhances the appeal of adult books featuring a child
narrator, is that every reader can relate to a child’s feelings, because we were all
once children. As Rudyard Kipling writes:

there is only one way of understanding children; they cannot be understood by
imagination, or observation, nor even by love. They can only be understood by
memory … I was a child once myself, and by some fortunate chance I remember
exactly how I used to feel and think about things.37

Rudyard Kipling is certainly right when he says that, in general, all children learn
to explore and understand the world in a similar way. However, there is the
difference in upbringing and in social setting that create a divergence in the way
children perceive and experience the world. Accordingly, everyone can understand

37 Knoepflmacher, U.C. “The Balancing of Child and Adult: An Approach to Victorian Fantasies for
Children.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 37.4 (Mar. 1983): 497-‐530, 499 – Further references are
included in the text (UCK).
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the behaviour and learning curve of children that grow up in more or less similar
circumstances as oneself, but to say that every adult reader can relate to every
child’s behaviour and attitude, within each context, is exaggerated. It is the same as
if we would say that every adult must understand all the other adults, because we
are all grown-‐ups. However, everybody knows from experience that this general
mutual understanding is utopian and a far cry from reality.
Yet, when the reader is confronted with the fully developed character of an
adult narrator, with all his ticks and whims, then only a limited set of readers can
identify with that specific character. Children’s characters on the contrary are less
developed, easier to deal with and the reader has a general notion of the
inconsistency and babbling that he needs to expect, when confronted with a child.
Of course, this is a generalization, because there are also young people, who
display a complex character and a fully developed attitude, in relation to their
environment. In the case, where a child narrator has a fully developed character,
because that’s the way the author wants to present his narrator, the author can
create such a childhood setting for his character that the reader is coaxed to feel
even sympathy for a nasty child character. The reader criticizes an adult narrator,
who behaves inappropriately, and who has a malevolent character, because people
instinctively feel that everybody is responsible for their own destiny as soon as we
are grown up, even if we have had a difficult childhood.
Finally, when the novel is narrated from a child’s perspective, the two,
reader and writer, get the chance to revisit their own childhood. Even if the reader
has a different social background and a different life experience than the child
narrator, as discussed in the preceding paragraph, reading about a child’s
experiences and history still triggers memories of one’s own childhood and leads
to a settlement of past events. Retracing past events helps people with coming to
terms with one’s own childhood.
Additionally, the author, too, can have a similar psychologically cleaning
experience, when he writes from an adult’s perspective about past experiences.
However, the advantage in employing a child narrator is that writing about a child
creates the necessary distance between past experience and one’s current life as a
grown-‐up. At the time of the writing process, the author is an adult and he feels
more at ease, because he can put his present persona in the foreground, if the
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reader or a critic attempt to compare him with his characters and to draw a
parallel between the author’s childhood and his fictive character. If the writer
creates adult characters then there is a tendency that the reader or a reviewer
understands the author’s text as a biographical processing of information, which
deflects the reader’s attention away from the novel’s actual message and veers the
reader’s awareness to the author’s private life. Elinor Ochs comments that

every telling provides narrators and listener/readers with an opportunity for
fragmented self-‐understanding. Each telling of a narrative situated in time and
space engages only facets of narrator’s or listener/ reader’s selfhood in that it
evokes only certain memories, concerns, and expectations. In that sense,
narratives are apprehended by partial selves, and narratives so apprehended
access only fragments of experience. Marcel Proust captures this insight in writing,
“it is only in one small section of the complete idea we have of [a person] that we
are capable of feeling emotion; indeed it is only in one small section of the
complete idea he has of himself that he is capable of feeling any emotion either.”
(EO 22)

When reading a novel, it can be one small passage or one small experience that the
narrator shares, which allows the reader to feel one with the narrator. At the same
time, one incident in the story can grant the reader an insight in the author’s
psyche and emotional aura. In a way, small fragments of language, like single
words or short sentences, can suffice to bring two people, in our case, reader and
narrator or reader and author closer together. Language helps people to realize
that we share a common reality and that our understanding of each other depends
on our ability to accurately express what we mean. Consequently, it is only logical
to me that writers have come up with different art forms, like poems, short stories,
and so on, and with different versions of narrators, in order to amplify the
possibility of being accurately understood, by their readership. If an author fails to
touch his audience at heart, by writing from an adult perspective, he might resort
to creating a child character and if that fails also an elderly narrator, in order to
speak to a broader variety of readers. Yet, an author can also be very talented and
manage to create convincing narrators from all walks of life. Thus, in the end, the
child narrator is basically just another form of expression or a vehicle, which
allows the transmission of meaning. In that respect, the importance of the child is
made redundant, because only the fact that a message adopts a different form is
relevant and not the idea, which form exactly that is.
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Additionally, another practical aspect that comes to mind when one thinks
of an advantage that a child narrator can bring about is the fact that the child will
grow up one day. So, when the author creates a child character, he lays at the same
time the basis for the creation of future novels, which focus on the growth and
development of the same character. If the character is an old man to start off with,
then the author can write about his past life, his experiences and later on, about his
children or grandchildren, but at the expense of the emotional and psychological
growth of the same character throughout a series of books. When there is a child
character to start off with though, the novel can have a sequel.
On the other hand, the gradual development of the main character and his
coming-‐off-‐age means loosing his childlike character that the narrator used to
portray in the very first novel and his original voice that constituted the unique
appeal for the reader. Of course, those readers, who enjoy reading novels featuring
child narrators, do not read any sequels, where the child narrator is a grown-‐up.
Yet, readers who are mainly attracted by the specific genre of novels narrated by
child characters, might start to find a liking in adult characters, when they start
following their child narrator’s growth and coming-‐off-‐age. At the same time, when
a series of novels starts loosing its appeal to readers, who prefer child narrators,
because the child narrator has turned into an adult, then the same series attracts a
different readership, which enjoys reading narratives by adults. In that case, the
author keeps the same amount of readers, while altering his target readership.
This change in audience has a positive effect, if we consider that the author’s
message reaches a broader variety of people from different social backgrounds
and with different interests.
Still, if we assume that an author creates a series of books throughout which
the main child character grows physically, emotionally and psychologically, we
also need to assume that the author masters the ability to create a convincing and
complex adult narrator. An advantage for the author in terms of child narrators is
that child characters are generally less complex and less emotionally and
psychologically developed, than adult characters. Of course, this observation is a
generalization and the complexity of a person depends on his background,
upbringing and experiences in life. Yet, the observation that the character’s
development depends on his experiences in life, explains the challenge of creating
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and writing about adult characters. When an author wants to create a convincing
adult character or narrator, the writer needs to find explanations for the
character’s behaviour by inventing and writing about background situations and
past events that have formed his character’s personality. A child narrator in
contrast is easier to portray, because the reader assumes that the child moulds his
worldview according to the way in which the adults surrounding him influence his
thinking. The child character has less life experience to draw from and less
linguistic resources, so the child narrator repeats what he hears. The adult
narrator imitates his surrounding too, but he has more experience to fall back onto
and to compare other people’s opinion and behaviour to his new experiences and
thus, can approach life with the necessary, but more critical distance, than a child.
However, the gradual development of a child character into an adult
character, respecting the general truthful psychological development of a person’s
nature, according to his circumstances, is a challenge for any author. Children
change rapidly, so it is easier to define a child’s learning curve, than an adult’s,
because adults are more reluctant to transform. Accordingly, a child growing more
mature throughout a novel, or who is acting on a whim, seems more natural, than
an adult who suddenly re-‐evaluates his previous attitude and way of thinking.
Hence, for the author it is an advantage, if he sticks with the elaboration of child
characters and deepens his observation and portrayal of children, so that his
characters become more lifelike and convincing, from one novel to the other,
because a child’s character is formed by his current circumstances, whereas an
adult’s nature is based on his past, present, and on the future life he is trying to
create.
Yet, we need to agree with U.C. Knopflmacher according to whom, ‘torn
between the opposing demands of innocence and experience, the author who
resorts to the wishful thinking of the child nonetheless feels compelled, in varying
degrees, to hold on to the grown-‐up’s circumscribed notions about reality’ (UCK
499). The critic is of course right to point out that an author needs to reproduce
adult reality to some degree in his work, because the author knows who his target
audience is and consequently, the writer formulates his text in such a way that his
reader can understand the novel’s message. In that respect, the content and the
novel’s core message are more important than the child’s authenticity. However,
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when we notice that the author does not strive to portray a realistic child
character, but rather concentrates on his narrative, we need to wonder why the
author still uses a child character, instead of an adult narrator. Of course, a
combination of the child’s appeal, like his innocence, his ability to question events
and many more positive aspects like mentioned before, make the author’s text
attractive in addition to the novel’s message. Additionally, it is hard to define an
authentic child’s character, because children’s psychological and emotional
development depends on the outer circumstances and on individual character. So,
it is also hard to locate and criticize if an author has managed to portray a realistic
child or not.
In a coming-‐off-‐age novel, a transformation is happening. The child narrator
is growing older and developing emotionally, socially, psychologically and
physically. Yet, at the same time the reader and author are also evolving.
Consequently, at the end of the story, the narrator, the reader and the author have
discovered and developed the novel and their own life story simultaneously. The
evolutionary effect of the story would be preserved, if an adult narrator told the
story. The difference between an adult narrator and a child narrator is though that
the development of a child narrator is more obvious, because a child’s learning
curve is steeper, as highlighted earlier on. Consequently, the child’s obvious
development helps the reader to note, appreciate and understand his own
personal growth, because the sensation of evolution and progress is more
apparent or nearly palpable in the child narrator.
Furthermore, a child’s narrative includes the positive aspect of natural
truthfulness, because children are generally not calculating. Whatever a child says
is commonly blurted out, without any second thought or hidden agenda. Of course,
this observation is an oversimplification, because there are children, who are
already manipulative and calculating, at a very young age. Usually though, young
people are straightforward, say what is on their mind and answer questions
honestly. In fact, research has shown that children find it challenging to control
their body language, whenever they are lying. So, when a child is untruthful, he
quickly puts his hands in front of his mouth or hides them behind his back. These
indications help the adult and reader to identify, when a child is lying. Of course,
this method only works when the text reveals the child’s body language or when
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there are other clues in the text that identify the child narrator’s reality as different
from other characters’ reality.
Still, children’s truthfulness is advantageous for the author, because the
author can be more lenient in the creation of his characters, because when his
child narrator says or does something that does not fit into the linear development
of the novel or that is irrelevant to the story, then the reader will not doubt the
author’s talent in creating a deliberate story and plot. The reader assumes that the
author intends the child character to act according to his whims and to comment
on any observation, whether it is relevant in relation to the story or not. In When
We Were Romans, the child narrator, for example, comments on his environment
and describes the people he meets in detail, while the focus of the story is on the
mother’s mental derangement. An adult character would have focused more on the
woman’s behaviour, than on external events. For the young boy though, their trip
to Rome is more captivating, than the mother, whose behaviour he is unable to
interpret. In Matthew Kneale’s story, the reader notices that children focus on
those things in their surroundings that they manage to understand and to
comprehend. Accordingly, when an author uses a child narrator to comment on
shortcomings, this procedure is more subtle than pointing out characters’
deficiencies right away. Child characters omit mentioning those things that they
cannot digest or they marginally comment on them. This behaviour points out
other characters’ shortcomings without addressing them directly.
Of course, an adult narrator could also ignore the mother’s mental
instability and focus on the Italian scenery. However, in that case, the reader would
wonder which kind of psychological development the adult narrator has that
prevents him from noticing the mother’s mental decline. Thus, in that situation, the
narrator would attract the reader’s attention, while the story’s message would be
circumcised.
Additionally, the text’s message would alter altogether, if an adult narrator
told the story, because discussing an adult relationship is different from portraying
and analyzing child-‐parent interaction.
If we assume that the child narrator is mostly truthful and relates his
environment in the way he observes the people and events surrounding him, then
the narrative turns more into an observation report or a documentary, than into a
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fictive story. The child narrator is an eyewitness, who is not involved in the
discussion and he does not have to take any decisions. The reader sees what the
narrator is seeing, but the reader adopts a superior position, because the reader is
left to judge and to develop his own opinion. The child observer and narrator only
proposes the facts and the outside world as he sees them. Tanner Tony explains
that ‘the “small expanding consciousness” is more importantly present as a
“register of impressions,” but it is only one of many such registers, more pathetic,
more idealistic than the others perhaps, but in the long run not necessarily more
reliable’ (TT 207). The adult reader is free to construct and interpret the child’s
words, according to his own understanding and worldview. The reader can project
his personal reality into the novel.
On the other hand, the reading experience becomes more challenging,
because attributing more depth to a novel, by interpreting the text on a personal
basis also depends on the reader’s ability to fall back onto personal experience and
to have the ability to question descriptions and portrayal of events. If the text
remains without the reader’s ability for interpretation, then the novel remains on a
basic level, because the child’s logic is less complex and varies from adult logic.
Moreover, the fact that children have less responsibility for themselves and
for other people, frees them more time to observe their surroundings and to point
out social shortcomings. In When We Were Romans, Lawrence observes

Then Franseen started asking mum all about dad, so I thought “uhoh, be carefull
(sic), don’t forget Jemima.” She wasn’t doing the pots this time, that was lucky, she
was watching telly in Italian instead, there was a man with a tiny beard asking
questions and some ladies standing in a line just wearing their underpants, but she
was listening to us, I could tell, her eyes looked round at us sometimes, so I thought
“don’t make her go off like an airaid siren again.” (MK 62)

Adults ignore or overlook detail, whereas children have the time to really ‘see.’ On
the one hand, Lawrence is ‘free’ to observe his sister’s behaviour, because he
remains an outsider to the adult discussion. Additionally, Lawrence is closer in age
to Jemima, than any of the other adults, so the boy still remembers how he used to
act around adults and how he used to listen in on their conversations.
Children are also less used to theatrics than adults and children are more
powerless to stop other people from behaving in a disturbing way. So, Lawrence is
more sensitive to a potential tantrum of his sister’s. Yet, whatever circumstance
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allows Lawrence to observe, what the adults in this scene fail to detect, Lawrence’s
comment still highlights that children as young as they might be are able to
observe and assimilate adult behaviour. Children might lack the necessary
experience to process what the words or behaviour that they are witnessing mean,
but children assimilate their environment according to their worldview. Larry
Wolff quotes Rousseau in his research. He says that Jean-‐Jacques ‘Rousseau urged
the reader to select with care the objects surrounding a child, since “everything
that surrounds him is the book in which, unconsciously (…), he continually
enriches his memory while waiting for his judgment to be able to profit from it.’38
Rousseau argues that a child is unable to make sense of the world surrounding him
straight away. In that situation, the reader is challenged to make sense of the world
instead of the child. The child narrator creates the necessary affective situation, by
appealing to the reader’s sympathy and the effect is that the reader constructs his
own understanding of the novel and completes the child’s narrative with his own
adult imagination and background knowledge.
Consequently, there is simultaneous creation of distance and proximity
between the reader and the child narrator. The reader feels superior to the child
narrator, because he can interpret the facts that the child presents and is in a
better position to ponder the narrator’s words and to take them at face value or to
alter them, in order to create valid explanations for the other characters’ behaviour
and attitude. On the other hand, the reader and child narrator approach each other,
because the reader feels responsible for the child character and they both share in
the secret of observing other people. The reader sees behind the scenes, because
he can read between the lines and interpret the child’s global situation. The appeal
to the reader’s responsibility is only generated when there is a child narrator at the
centre of the novel. If the main character were an adult, then the adult reader
would still form a relationship with the narrator, but a less intimate one. The
reader could understand the adult character better, even not necessarily, but the
reader would not feel superior anymore, because the adult character can make
sense of his own surroundings and the reader feels no need to protect his
character from any harm that he is not aware of. Blodgett Harriet comments that

38 Wolff, Larry. “When I Imagine a Child: The Idea of Childhood and the Philosophy of Memory in
the Enlightenment.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 31.4 (Summer 1998): 377-‐401, 378.

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‘the narrator addresses all manner of readers in turn, keeping them involved with
the theme. Although the characters are undeniably responsible for their personal
misdeeds, society supplied the corrupting worldly atmosphere. Perpetually, the
narrator prods the public conscience’ (GR 35). When a child is accepted as he is and
not criticized for acting aggressively or evil, then the responsibility is taken away
from the child. Yet, somebody must be responsible for the child’s foul mood and so
society is encouraged to question their attitude, behaviour, and education of
children.
In The Life Before Us, Momo describes what life is like in Parisian boarding
houses for orphans or children of prostitutes. Those houses are also run by
prostitutes, while their colleagues are at work: ‘Take Madame Sophie, who keeps
another illegal nursery on the rue Surcouf, or the one they call the Comtesse
because her name is the widow Comte. Well, sometimes they’ve got as many as ten
day boarders, and the first thing they do is stuff them full of tranquilizers’ (GR 35).
In this case, Momo can observe what is going on in his surroundings, without
having any responsibility to take appropriate action in altering the children’s
situation. Momo is too young to interfere and to help those children who are
drugged, in order to keep them still. If there were an adult narrator, then the adult
character would need to take action and to try and change the course of events. In
that case, the whole plot would change and the purpose of the novel would be lost
or at least be altered and turn into a different story. In Momo’s case, the narrator
presents the facts to the reader and the reader has to decide for himself, how he
would react if he were confronted with a situation like Momo’s. In Momo’s case,
the reader is challenged to make up his own mind, to think about social issues and
to come up with a solution, because Momo is too young to think of a solution
himself. Blodgett Harriet notes that the child narrator is meant to ‘make mankind
smile wryly even while shifting about uncomfortably” (HB 214). Momo does come
up with his own solutions to his own personal problems. Yet, those resolutions are
short-‐term remedies that guarantee Momo survival, but which lack the long term
view that adults possess and which would help him to settle his situation in a more
comforting way, for a longer period of time. If the main character was a grown up
and if that person would take no action, then the reader would accept the
character’s decision or reject it, but his mind would not be challenged as much to
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rummage for a solution, because the adult character proposes a potential solution
or attitude, in times of hardship.
Yet, the idea that the reader is challenged into taking action or into getting
involved, at least emotionally and intellectually with the situation that he is
witnessing, only works if the reader readily accepts Momo’s description of his life
as a truthful and factual account. As soon as the reader starts to question the
character’s authenticity and reliability, then the novel loses its central message and
appeal. Still, I would say that the reader’s acceptance of the novel’s setting does not
depend on the child narrator’s truthfulness or on his accurate childlike nature, but
rather on the individual’s approach to reading. When a reader manages to fully
immerse in a novel’s setting and to put himself in the characters’ shoes, then the
reader will be able to get emotionally and intellectually involved, even if plot,
characters, and setting display a number of logistic or stylistic shortcomings.
Additionally, the author puts his child character in an inferior position in
relation to the other characters in the novel, because the child does not understand
the world of the grown-‐ups and always lags behind in understanding the
development of the story’s events. In When We Were Romans, Lawrence trusts his
mother unconditionally, although the reader is aware of the mother’s growing
madness and loss of reality that develops throughout the novel. The mother says:

”I’m sure they won’t mind if you take a bit of time off, after all you’ll be learning
about Rome. For that matter you could even go to school here.” That made me
laugh, I said “but how can I mum, don’t be silly, I don’t speak italian (sic)” but mum
said “you can learn some, I can teach you.” I wasn’t sure, I thought “I bet it will be
hard, it will take ages” but then I thought “if mum says they won’t mind about the
tests she must know.” (MK 61)

On the one hand, the mother is right when she says that finding a new school is a
simple affair. Yet, this discussion between the two characters highlights the child’s
dependence on his mother. Throughout the novel, there are a multitude of
situations when Lawrence has to take adult control, because the mother is too
depressed to think or act reasonably. Yet, the child craves the mother’s support,
approval and reassurance in everyday situations. The child’s potential to function
like an adult in precarious situations and to act like a common child at other times,
highlights the idea that adult and childlike behaviour develop according to
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circumstances and that a child narrator cannot really be labelled unrealistic,

because his features resemble that of an adult too closely.
The child narrator functions as a tool that illustrates the relationship
between adults and children, reflecting the social attitudes towards children at the
time when the novel was written or when the child narrator was invented by its
author. Tamar Schapiro asks the question: ‘when is a parent justified in preventing
a child from acting according to her will? When is a child entitled to make her own
choices and face consequences?” (TS 715). In Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, the
child narrator, Oskar, takes his own decisions. He freely roams New York. That is
what it seems to the reader because the reader, like Oskar, is unaware that Oskar’s
mother keeps track of the child’s whereabouts without his awareness. To the
reader it seems implausible that a child Oskar’s age is left to decide what to do with
his time and where to go. It is only later in the book, that this fact is put into
perspective and the reader understands that what we as readers think and believe
is what Oskar believes and narrates. There are two reasons, why we accept the
child’s narrative at face value: for one, the reader is immersed in the story and
secondly, we are aware that Oskar’s account is fictive. The story’s setting, which is
different to our real life setting, allows a realism different to ours, which remains
little questioned to a certain extent, as long as the rest of the story forms a
coherent whole and as long as the suspense in the story is maintained. If the reader
starts to question every aspect of a story, then the entire reading process starts to
lose its appeal.
Secondly, the reader also accepts alleged unrealistic situations, like a ten-‐
year-‐old roaming the city of New York without any adult observation, because the
story is told from a child’s perspective. The reader consciously or unconsciously
assumes that in the end, there will be a reason for or a clarification of the child’s
situation, which is the case in Oskar’s story. Additionally, the reader also assumes
that the child’s perspective does not manage to embrace the full scope of his
surroundings and that the child is more focused on his own worldview than on the
adults’ responsibility for and care of him. Anew, the reader and the author adopt a
superior position in relation to the child.
Schapiro Tamar points out that ‘the general welfare (of our society) is best
promoted if older people take control of the lives of younger people. Being more
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experienced, they are likely to make beneficial choices, whereas young people are
likely to make costly ones’ (TS 718). On the one hand, Schapiro Tamar is of course
right, because the distinct role allocation, distinguishing between provider and
receiver, the cared for and the caretaker, allows society to function smoothly.
People’s roles are organized according to their general physical, mental and social
capacities. Adults have more life experience that allows them to take informed
decisions and to make the right choices. However, what do we as adults label as
‘informed’ or ‘right choices’? In Matthew Kneale’s novel, Lawrence observes:

I thought “I bet she’s going to say something serious” and I was right, she said “what would
you say, lesonfon (sic), if we stay on for a bit here? Perhaps until the summer?” Jemima
laughed, she said “yes yes, lets stay” but I don’t think she understood really, she just
thought “if we stay then I can have more ice cream.” (MK 60)

Of course, Lawrence is right when he observes that the mother tries to trick the
children into complying with her plan of staying in Italy for a longer period.
Lawrence is the link between the adult world and the little sister’s point of view,
who manages to remain childlike, while at the same time beginning to read
between the lines. Lawrence starts to consciously understand that adults use
deliberate language, both verbal and physical, in order to manipulate other people.
Of course, one could argue that the mother manipulates her children, by coaxing
them in a friendly way and that the children are thus, put into an inferior situation.
On the other hand, Jemima is content with the situation, because she can sense her
own benefit in the events that are going to take place. So in a way, adults are made
to believe that they pull the strings and that they manage to coax their children
into compliance. Yet, seen from another perspective, children are more creative
than adults, because they manage to extract the best or most beneficial for their
own wellbeing. A child narrator manages to convey this duality in understanding
and in looking at one and the same idea from different perspectives, because the
child narrator is directly speaking from his frame of mind and reveals an attitude
that remains undisclosed to the adults in the novel. Consequently, the child
narrator makes the adult reader the accomplice of his world and explains to the
adult reader how much understanding a child has of the adult point of view. Thus,
reader and child narrator form an informed entity that stands in contrast to the
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other characters in the novel, who do not know what the narrator is thinking or
saying about them or about himself.
Furthermore, as already mentioned several times before, I am convinced
that children are often intuitively right. Adults have more experience, which can
help them to make the right choices, but adults also carry a bag of negative
experiences that push them to avoid taking certain risks that could allow them to
expand and to multiply their benefit. Children have fewer experiences to compare
to and to shy away from. So as a consequence, a lot of experiences can make a
person wiser, but also more prudent, in either a protective or a stifling way. In
When We Were Romans, the mother takes all the major decisions, like leaving the
father and fleeing to Rome. Yet, when the family arrives in Italy, Lawrence has to
hold it together, because the mother suffers from paranoia and depression.
In Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Oskar says: ‘She was obviously mad at
me, but I didn’t know why. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Or if I had, I didn’t know
what it was. And I definitely didn’t mean to do it.’39 On the one hand, we have
argued that children adopt an inferior position to adults, because they lack the
right level of understanding, in order to debunk ambidextrous behaviour. Yet, this
paragraph illustrates that the child character has the advantage that he ignores
adult dismissal. Children are very adamant and insistent, when they want to know
or understand something. Of course, this statement is a generalization and the way
an adult behaves depends on his cultural background and education, but generally,
an adult who is rejected by another adult, usually renounces on asking further
questions and accepts the answer that he has been given. Children though keep
asking, until they get the answers they were looking for, or until they get at least an
answer at all. In that respect, it is advantageous for an author to have a child
narrator, if he wants to introduce a gradual amount of suspense to his novel,
because at first, the child’s attempts to voice any criticism and to change the events
of the story might go unheard, but later on, as the novel develops, the child’s voice
becomes more poignant, until the child or narrator reaches his goal. Whether
getting an answer at any cost is always desirable is debatable, but at least the

39 Safran Foer, Jonathan. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. London: Penguin Books. 2006, 6 –
Further references are included in the text (JSF).

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probing process creates a degree of suspense, which is furthering for a story’s

appeal.
Moreover, the child character is more vulnerable to deceit and dismissal,
when he has to confront the reader and the other character with a limited amount
of background knowledge and experience. However, the reader becomes also more
vulnerable, when faced with a child, because the reader starts to think about the
issues the child starts to question. An adult who challenges problems and people
that the adult reader or the other characters would block out is perceived as
smart-‐alec. A child though appeals to an adult’s natural desire to help and to
nurture the child’s development and intellectual growth, in addition to preventing
the child from abuse by other people, who are cleverer. Consequently, the reader
starts to think about the questions the child narrator asks himself or the other
characters in the novel and the reader is challenged to make up his own mind in
relation to the (social) issue in question.
Moreover, the reader’s thinking process allows his intellectual growth. The
reader experiences this intellectual, psychological and emotional growth
simultaneously with the child narrator. The child’s way of thinking is of course a
different one, when the author has created a generally realistic child. However, the
narrator’s way of thinking can be along the same lines as the reader’s, if the reader
tries to retrace the child’s way of thinking. If the writer has managed to create an
authentic child narrator, then there is an additional dimension of thought-‐
provoking input that the reader can draw from, because he has to look into a
subject from a perspective different to his own. If the narrator’s way of thinking is
very similar to that of an average adult, then the reading process is less challenging
or surprising, but in that case, the reading process backs up the reader’s world
view and way of thinking, which gives the reader self confidence, because the
reader feels that he is understood by people, who act and think in the same way as
him. Those people acting like the reader are of course just characters, but they
have been created by the author and embody the author’s thoughts.
Furthermore, in terms of advantages that a child narrator adds to a novel,
we have mentioned that child narrators add a fun dimension to any novel, because
their tone of voice is naturally light-‐hearted and the children’s presence allows the
author to introduce visual material that portrays or reflects the child’s varied
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world view and way of thinking. However, in terms of disadvantages, we need to
wonder, on the other hand, to what extent it is appropriate to treat any topic from
a childlike and fun perspective? At the centre of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, there is Oskar a ten-‐year-‐old child narrator.
During the story, Oskar unravels his family’s history. The narrator’s father died in
9/11 and Oskar goes on a quest to find the lock that fits a key that his father had
hidden at home in a vase. Death and terrorism are two topics that people find it
generally hard to deal with. Jonathan Safran Foer approaches stupefying topics
from a child’s perspective and throughout the reading process it becomes clear
that on the one hand, the child manages to lighten the novel’s tone and to make the
reader smile, despite reading about a desolate topic, because his ideas are
innovative and his outlook on the world is positive.
On the other hand, the reader cannot fully enjoy the positive atmosphere
and the suspension created by the narrator’s light-‐hearted quest for the lock,
because the reader is aware of the child’s distressing familial situation. The reader
should share in the child’s adventurous quest, but we as grown-‐ups know that the
child narrator goes on a quest to forget about his father’s death instead of dealing
with the sad situation at hand. Laura Miller argues that

choosing a child narrator gives Foer access to extravagant emotions and quirky
imaginings that would seem cloying or self-‐indulgent in a grown-‐up, but at the cost
of allowing the central trauma its due. September 11 was a surreal intrusion of the
spectacular and malevolent into the banal and safe. But for a kid like Oskar, reality
has yet to be fully established, so surreality is impossible. How and why his father
was lost matters little next to the raw fact of his disappearance.40

Laura Miller is of course right, when she points out that Oscar’s search does not
discuss the profound political situation that has led to his father’s death. Yet, we
need to question to what extent the political destiny is relevant for the story’s
message. By discussing Oskar’s reality and by depicting his way of dealing with his
father’s death and his denial of his reality, the narrative also highlights the broader
political and social picture for the reader. The adult reader is aware of the
background story and can make sense of the fact that the author hints at the effect

40 Miller, Laura. “Terror Comes to Tiny Town.” Nymag.com:
http://nymag.com/print/?/nymetro/arts/books/reviews/11574 -‐ Further references are included

in the text (LM).
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of political decisions in general. The text becomes a subtle tool to highlight social
and political shortcomings. The story’s content and the parts that the author does
not explicitly mention underline reality even more.
Of course, the reader’s reaction to the comic aspects of the novel depends
on the reader’s individual character and on his personal attitude towards topics
like death or terrorism. If the reader’s way of coming to terms with those
situations in life is also by resorting to humour and by concentrating on the fun
aspect of life, then the reader will be able to benefit from the funny side that the
child narrator creates.
Yet, even if the reader manages to enjoy the child character’s positive
attitude towards life, he still remains aware of the child’s precarious situation,
which leads to a negative connotation that pervades the whole story. If the
narrator were an adult, then the fun aspect would sound more mature, because it
would show through sarcasm or irony and the reader would be more confident to
believe that the narrator’s comic way of dealing with the situation is his nature and
that it is more a coming to terms with the terrible situation, than an attempt to
block out reality. In The Life Before Us, Momo says that ‘it’s always in the eyes that
people are the saddest’ (RG 24). If the author uses child narrators there is the
problem that the novel is perceived as playing with the heart’s strings. There is
always the danger that a serious novel becomes a tearjerker, without it intending
to be one, because the child’s voice renders the text melodramatic and as a
consequence, the novel’s message falls to pieces.
In the end, there are a number of aspects that speak in favour and against
putting a child narrator at a novel’s centre, but it always depends on the reader’s
ability for interpretation and on his background, to which extent the child narrator
is perceived as authentic and to which extent the child narrator can develop his full
potential effect, in favour of the successful and most affecting transmission of the
story’s central message. In the following chapter, we are going to analyze to which
extent Romain Gary and Jonathan Safran Foer manage to employ the child
narrator’s assets best, in order to support the successful and appealing
transmission of their novel’s message. Additionally, I am also going to discuss
which challenges the authors had to face as a consequence of choosing a child as
the voice of their narratives.
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4. Creative Thinking: Uniqueness and Function of Child

Narrators
Jane McKee argues that novels featuring child narrators ‘all remain fundamentally
romantic for they evoke extreme situations and extraordinary behaviour and avoid
totally the usual problems of everyday life.’41 In the following paragraphs we are
going to have a more detailed look at The Life Before Us, by Romain Gary and at
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. In relation to these two
novels, Jane McKee is right in her observation that books featuring child narrators
focus on extreme situations and extraordinary behaviour. Romain Gary’s
protagonist, Momo, grows up in the extreme setting of Paris’ brothel scene,
because he is the orphaned child of a prostitute and in the second novel, Extremely
Loud & Incredibly Close, ten-‐year-‐old Oskar’s father has died in the 9/11 attack on
the Twin Towers. Since these two novels take place in extraordinary venues, they
call for their characters’ peculiar behaviour.
Thus, on the one hand, Jane McKee’s observation is accurate, because the
novels mentioned above suggest intense situations. However, we need to ask
whether not most novels focus on extraordinary settings, events or characters,
because the reading process allows the reader to come into contact with a world
and with views different to his own. Everyday problems show that we all basically
share the same common concerns and worries. So, it is only natural that a writer
tries to highlight and pick an unusual or curious topic, as the central theme of his
novel, because he wants to make the unusual and special part of our average lives.
Authors need to cater for what their audience wants to read and it is in human
nature to look out for and discuss extraordinary events and behaviour. We are all
surrounded by the ordinary, on a daily basis, and reading allows the common
citizen to escape from his mediocrity and to experience a world different to his
own. Consequently, why would an author choose to look at the most plain aspects
of daily life, just because he has chosen to put a child character at the centre of his
novel? Of course, I have argued earlier on that children look at the world from a
different perspective and manage to convey their worldview in an interesting and
artistically challenging way. Seen from that point of view, it would make sense to

41 McKee, Jane. “The Symbolic Imagination of Romain Gary.” The Maynooth Review 6.2 (May 1982):
60-‐71, 61 – Further references are included in the text (JMK).
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discuss the ordinary and common from a child’s perspective. Yet, one cannot
expect that all the novels written from a child’s perspective intend to examine the
ordinary from an unusual point of view.
Certainly, there are also authors who especially concentrate their writing
attention on everyday topics, because readers also find it comforting to compare
their own daily existence with other people’s experiences and attitudes. Yet,
whether an author focuses on extraordinary events and people or whether a text is
based on ordinary lives, a writer will never manage to completely separate the one
world from the other: there will always be extraordinary in the ordinary and vice-‐
versa, because both worlds are intrinsically linked. Additionally, it also depends on
each individual, what a person views as ordinary or as unusual. Consequently, the
interpretation of the text depends ultimately on the reader and on his worldview.
Furthermore, the criticism that child narrators react in an extraordinary
way to an extreme situation can be challenged too, because how do we expect
people to react to extreme situations? How do we expect children to react to their
parents’ death or to the confrontation with drugs and prostitution? Allowedly, one
could argue that an author would rather choose a child narrator or character to
feature in a novel with an extreme setting, because it is more interesting for the
reader to see how a child reacts to a crisis and develops later on, because children
react differently than adults. Yet, this is also a generalization, because no one can
ever accurately predict how someone else is going to respond or behave, since it
depends on a person’s prior experiences and on his current mood, how he judges
and evaluates a situation. What remains interesting though is that children have to
deal with an extreme situation and they have less experience to fall back onto,
which could assure them that there is always a way out.
Yet, because children have less experience in life, they also avoid viewing or
perceiving the new negative or extreme incident as another one in a series of
negative experiences. The adult can perceive a negative encounter as too
overwhelming, because there have been many previous negative events, whereas a
child perceives the experience as a first and still is free to deal with it based on an
optimistic and unconditioned mindset.
Furthermore, Jane McKee argues that the novels featuring child narrators

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are constructed in such a way that they give pride of place to the elucidation of the
motives, which govern the actions of the characters. Many of them also reveal an
amazingly symmetrical construction of plot in that the attitudes and
preoccupations of the central character or characters are reflected to a very
remarkable extent in the minor characters of the novel. Each work tends to reflect
a certain type of attitude to the problems posed to man by the human situation,
evoked in greatest detail in the central character, but reflected, from a slightly
different angle, in many of the characters around him and in a way which goes
beyond the normal convergence of interests to be expected in a shared situation.
(JMK 62)

First of all, the fact that the same motive is recurrently exposed by different
characters and through different events in the story is, on the one hand, only
natural, since the recurring idea is the one key issue that the author wants to
discuss in his text and to give his readers an understanding of. Additionally, the
idea that one motive is consistently discussed and adduced in a text mirrors real
life thinking, because people also focus on the same issue over and over again, if
that idea is what occupies their current world view.
In addition, if we look at Jane McKee’s point in relation to child narrators
and if we assume that children have limited access to background experience, then
the fact that the same motive recurs throughout a novel is also lifelike, because
there are only few key motives or strong points of interest in the focus of the
child’s worldview.
Moreover, Jane McKee also argues that novels narrated by children tend to
constantly concentrate on the same motive and to reflect this motive through the
text’s minor characters and their actions or attitudes, too. In my opinion, this
repetitive approach to a specific topic reflects true to life movement, because we
observe in other people the character traits or concerns that currently occupy our
frame of mind and we tend to form relations or get in contact with those people,
who are similar to us in character and attitude.
Of course, on the other hand, it can also be the case that people surround
themselves with or observe ideas that represent the complete opposite of their
own worldview. In that case, we could say that the same motives are still recurring,
just reflected from the opposite perspective. Additionally, we can also argue that
adults influence children and shape their way of thinking and acting. Now, if we
assume that the child narrator is the main character of a novel and that the adults
are the minor characters, then the minor characters will of course share the same
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central thinking as the narrator, because the child reflects the behaviour and frame
of mind of the adults surrounding him.
And then again, we need to ask ourselves the question of how many
different motives there actually are in terms of novel writing material. Hence, the
idea that the writer recurrently highlights the same motive throughout a novel is
also due to a limited amount of topics to draw from. If an author would include
many different motives, then the author would need to expand those motives, to
weave a text around each theme and to interlink the different topics. This cross-‐
linking would lead to the development of an epic story, which would be
challenging for the reader to digest.
Additionally, if we think in terms of the child narrator, then we also need to
bear in mind that it is easier for a child character to display one motive or topic
more in depth, than to relate to different motives more in detail, because it is more
plausible that a child has only made one or two influential experiences in his life,
than a multitude of experiences, which are worthy of discussion. Of course, each
novel or narrator touches upon various issues throughout the novel’s course, but
in the end those ideas all come together to highlight the narrator’s or the child
narrator’s major concern or focus in life.
Certainly, if we say that it is easier for a child character to focus on one topic
and to illustrate that idea more in detail, we could object that the author is the
source of the text and that surely an adult can manage to interlink and discuss
several topics within one text. Yet, then again it is the author’s interest to expand
the reader’s understanding of one key idea and so, it makes more sense to
highlight that single key motive recurrently throughout the novel than to introduce
a multitude of ideas.
The previous discussion has made it clear that the qualities that we as
critics identify as specifically belonging to novels featuring child narrators are in
fact partly universal observations and expand to all literary genres and styles. In
the following chapters, we are going to have a closer look at The Life Before Us, by
Romain Gary and at Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer.
To what extent do these novels mirror the ideas previously raised and to what
extent do these two novels differ from texts featuring adult narrators? Which
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advantages do these two authors see in employing a child, as the narrator of their
story, or which disadvantages does their technique yield?

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98

4.1. The Life Before Us, by Romain Gary

The Life Before Us, by the French author Romain Gary is a first person narrative,
which centres on the child narrator, called Momo: ‘My name is Mohammed, but
everybody calls me Momo, because it sounds littler’ (RG 2). By giving his
protagonist a nickname and making him look harmless, Romain Gary manages to
create a child narrator that operates on different social and emotional levels.
Whenever a situation is illustrated from a more mature perspective, ‘Momo’ turns
into ‘Mohammed’ and the reader subconsciously perceives the narrator as older.
The reverse effect is created, when the child is called Momo. Thus, not just
specifying the narrator’s age gives the reader a specific view of the character, but
also the author’s play with words and language creates a very specific impression
of the narrator for the reader.
The words the other characters use in order to address the narrator and to
talk to and about him, create an image of the narrator, too. Hence, the other
characters’ language and the narrator’s language shape the reader’s perception of
the character’s age and correlating attitude.
Consequently, on the one hand, the language used in the novel, in order to
refer to the child narrator, defines the idea that the reader has of the narrator’s
age, as pointed out in the preceding paragraph. However, also the language the
other characters in the novel use or the words that the narrator employs, in order
to talk about the other characters, frame the reader’s impression of the child
character: if the child character is surrounded by magniloquent characters, who
use sophisticated language, then the contrast between the child’s way of
expression and his surrounding (adult) world is more pronounced. As a
consequence, in that case, the reader perceives the child’s language as even less
developed.
On the other hand, if the author decides to attribute the same linguistic
abilities to all his characters, child narrator included, then the reader will perceive
the child narrator as more mature, due to the language he uses, which resembles
that of the novel’s adult characters. So, even if it is mentioned in the story that the
child narrator is eight years old, the character’s advanced language will make the
reader imagine an older person.
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Moreover, Momo addresses the reader directly and admits that he is still
inexperienced and young and that his judgment needs the reader’s relativization,
at times: ‘now I understood. I hadn’t lived enough yet to have enough experience,
and even now talking to you I know that even after years of taking it on the chin
there’s always something left to learn’ (RG 173). Momo puts himself in an inferior
position, in relation to the reader, by admitting that he still has a lot to learn. On
the one hand, the child’s offensive attitude makes him sympathetic to the reader,
because the reader feels as if he understands Momo’s helplessness. Additionally,
the reader also feels the wish to follow Momo’s story and to observe, if he manages
to grow, as time goes by, and if he develops through experience.
Moreover, Momo plays with the idea that he has had a challenging
childhood. He points out that he had to ‘take a lot on the chin.’ In relation to this
statement, the reader feels more moved, when a child narrator expresses this
reality, than when an adult has had to endure a lot of suffering. Every individual
has had his share of personal tragedy and misfortune and consequently, the adult
reader expects the characters in a novel to equally deal with their fate in a
dignified way, without excessive lamentation.
In contrast, the reader can also find it interesting to witness the fate of an
individual who cannot deal with his personal misfortune at all and where a text
lays out and tracks the person’s gradual decline. In conclusion, a reader is much
more inclined to feel for and emotionally support a child narrator, who has to
come to terms with a lot of suffering, than with an adult narrator, who finds
himself in a similarly distressing situation. Of course, this explanation is also based
on a generalization. Thus, the fact that Momo uses a direct address to speak to the
reader bypasses the possibility that an author might not be naturally inclined to
sympathize with a child narrator. Momo involves the reader directly by talking to
him and thus, assures that he is being heard.
Furthermore, Momo is a nine-‐year-‐old boy, who grows up in an orphanage
and day care centre, which is run by an ex-‐prostitute, called Madame Rosa:

Madame Rosa was an ex-‐whore who’d come back from being deported to the
Jewish homes in Germany and had opened a clandestine rest home for the children
of whores who could be blackmailed with loss of paternity rights for illicit
prostitution and have to hide their kids because neighbors are usually bastards
capable of reporting you to the Public Welfare. (RG 143)
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As a child narrator, Momo has the advantage that he can comment on Madame
Rosa and the children’s situation, without feeling the need to interfere and to
meddle with the circumstances. Adults commonly feel like they need to get
involved, when people seem to have trouble leading a, so-‐called, regulated life.
People also tend to condemn each other’s passivity, when a situation calls for adult
intervention. Momo though does not feel the social pressure that usually dictates,
what is morally and ethically acceptable, in a certain culture, or not. Consequently,
Momo manages to observe a situation devoid of any biased judgment.
Additionally, Momo is a child, who lives in a situation that middle-‐class
society normally deems inappropriate for a child. Hence, speaking from his point
of view, Momo can convince the reader that the desire to alter another person’s
situation can be well-‐intentioned, but that people, who we deem in need of help or
change do not necessarily appreciate or need external support, because they feel
protected and secure in their current situation, as it is. Momo belongs to that social
group of people, who are dominated by individuals, who feel morally superior,
because they have enjoyed an education and because they feel that they can take
informed decisions. Yet, within that context, Momo points out the emotional
shortcomings and the uprooting that for children can be the end result of overtly
zealous social welfare: ‘minors are wonderfully protected in France, and when
there’s nobody to look after them the government throws them in jail for
safekeeping’ (RG 106). Of course, on the one hand, Momo’s statement is exaggerated
and additionally, the government needs to solve social problems, by putting
socially deprived children in safekeeping, when there are no foster families
available. Yet, a child narrator manages to illustrate that grown-‐ups view
children’s problems from an adult perspective and that there is also the child’s
own opinion of what is best for him that adults should consider, when looking for a
solution to the problem.
Furthermore, Romain Gary gives his child narrator a dimension of maturity,
by putting him in a situation, where children are not pampered and carefully
looked after. Momo is the child of a prostitute and grows up under the care of
Madame Rosa, an ex-‐prostitute, who dedicates her final years to looking after
socially disadvantaged children, like Momo. Within that context, Momo picks up
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more adult talk, than children in sheltered circumstances: ‘I stopped being

ignorant when I was three or four, and I sometimes miss it’ (RG 1). In what respect
exactly Momo stopped being ignorant is not specified in the novel. Of course, the
reader can imagine that Momo alludes to the fact that he learned about financial
hardship, prostitution, crime and sexual relations, when he was still too young. Yet,
on the other hand, the reader can never be sure what Momo learned that he would
rather have postponed knowing about, since what disturbs one person, might not
disturb another. What Momo’s vague statement illustrates though is anew the idea
that Momo has too little linguistic baggage to verbalize his experience. Of course,
we can argue that the ability to express emotions and experiences verbally does
not depend on age. Yet, grown-‐ups have more experience to fall back onto and to
use as reference point for comparison, also in a linguistic way. Thus, employing a
child narrator has the advantage that the reader can leave situations and events
unexplained and still preserve the character’s authenticity or credibility, because
allegedly, a child lacks the accurate words to comment on everything, anyway.
On the other hand, children, who lack their own words to describe their
surroundings, imitate the adults’ way of expressing themselves. At first sight,
Momo’s social background seems too challenging to be discussed from a child’s
perspective, but Romain Gary allows his child narrator to repeat what he hears.
This technique makes the child’s wording sound plausible. What Momo puts
forward are not his own ideas, but the chatter of Madame Rosa and her
acquaintances. So, when Momo says: ‘with all the pounds she had to lug around
with her, (Madame Rosa) had more than her share of daily life with all its sorrows
and cares. She said so too’ (RG 1), he sounds precocious on the one hand, but the
reader has to grant that the child grows up in a milieu, where children can pick up
all sorts of expressions and bits of general wisdom, without consciously being
aware of what he says.
On the one hand, the reader might think that Momo repeats the adults’
words without any awareness of their impact. On the other hand, the child is
impressed enough by the words that he hears, in order to repeat them to an
audience. Of course, even if the child does not understand the expression and
implied meaning, then the narrator’s tone of voice still carries the importance of
the message. When we discuss, if Momo understands his surroundings or not, or if
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he manages to make sense of the words he hears, then this discussion is basically
purely hypothetical, because Momo is a fictional character. The actual level of
understanding lies between author and reader. Yet, the discussion about the child’s
level of comprehension is relevant, because it illustrates to what extent an author
tries to portray a realistic, common child as the narrator of his story.
Moreover, we have argued that the author allows his child narrator to
repeat the words of his surroundings, in order to express the idea that the child
lacks accurate linguistic knowledge and the ability to formulate his ideas
independently of others. Of course, adults also repeat other people’s words at
times, because other people know better, how to express themselves or because
we admire, what we have heard other people say. Moreover, there is also the idea
that not just children lack the ability to formulate their ideas accurately, but that
also adults can display linguistic shortcomings, because they have never learned
how to articulate their emotions and opinion: ‘while he was talking, Monsieur N’Da
Amédée used to gesticulate and work himself into a lather, not because he was
angry, but because he had many more things to say to his parents than he could
express with his low-‐class resources’ (RG 27). Monsieur N’Da Amédée’s
shortcoming links him to a child’s reality and thus, illustrates the idea that
children, like lower social classes, are not taught or meant to, by upper or middle-‐
class society, how to communicate their desires and how to become noticeable
through language, because if all the members of society had an individual say, then
that situation would turn established social organization upside-‐down.
In any way, repeating other people’s phrases is a way of trying to belong to
a social group. The fact that children and lower social classes use different
language, than higher social classes, illustrates the discrepancy in status on
different levels. Momo’s language identifies him as a member of Paris’ socially
deprived milieu. This fact puts him in an inferior position in relation to the upper-‐
class society. However, the people surrounding Momo share the same language
features as the child, which allows the group to identify Momo as one of them. In
Momo’s case, the child is trying to form a social identity in relation to Madame
Rosa, because he is an orphan or at least, he does not know the whereabouts of his
parents. So Momo repeats Madame Rosa’s words, in order to learn, how to behave
within his foster mother’s social environment or context. It might also be that
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Momo was too young, when he was separated from his mother, in order to
remember anything about the ideas he learned in her social context. So Momo tries
to form an identity in relation to his current setting.
Moreover, if we pick up on the idea that mirroring other people helps us to
form an identity, then we can also say that people, who have to switch between
social contexts, because of changes, in terms of work place or relationships, also
imitate other people’s speech or actions, in order to feel more at home or in order
to synchronize their identity with their new and unknown environment.
Additionally, it is a fact that people copy other people’s behaviour, if they
like what they see or hear. Momo likes Madame Rosa of course, because she is his
guardian and consequently, he mirrors her mimics. Vice versa, Momo also wants
Madame Rosa to accept him. Instinctively, he tries to behave like her and to show
her that he is one of her kind: ‘it gave me a bad shock to hear I was paid for. I
thought Madame Rosa loved me free gratis and there was some connection
between us. I cried about it all one night, and that was my first big sorrow’ (RG 2).
Momo’s words illustrate the discrepancy between the infantile and adult
perception of the world. In the adult world, material laws reign, whereas in a
child’s world, mutual sympathy and understanding are what keeps people
together. Now, why would an author choose a child as the narrator and not an
adult, in order to illustrate that people imitate the people surrounding them, in
order to construct a feeling of sympathy and membership? We have already
established that adults also mirror other adults, so an adult narrator could
illustrate the same idea. Yet, it is more clearly apparent that a child mirrors his
surroundings, when he adopts adult expressions, than an adult, who repeats other
adult talk.
Furthermore, earlier on, we have pointed out that first person narratives
are stories of ‘self-‐interest’. Although Momo talks about his own experiences, and
although the reader lives Momo’s life, by listening to his first-‐hand account, we
simultaneously also experience other characters’ lives and tragedies. Thus, a first-‐
person narrator manages to extent the story’s scope to other characters’
experiences and tragedies. Jane McKee points out that Romain ‘Gary’s novels
always involve a degree of psychological analysis, and psychological realism’ (JMK
60). I would say that Romain Gary’s text conveys psychological realism, but I would
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add that the author also manages to capture realistic human interaction and
setting, because the narrator’s and the other characters’ lives overlap and interfere
with each other. Momo, the child narrator, is the miniature version of the older
people surrounding him. Momo’s life develops along the same lines as the other
characters’ lives. The reader is aware of this parallel in lifestyle and experience, but
the fact that Momo is still a child makes the reader want to hope that Momo
manages to escape his current setting and to live a life devoid of prostitution and
drug abuse, despite the similarities between him and the adult characters in his
novel. Consequently, a child narrator serves the purpose of highlighting, what a
person can think and feel at the beginning of his life and to which extent one’s
surroundings still predominate one’s own nature, when it comes to the question,
how a life develops in the long run.
Moreover, in terms of realistic setting, Romain Gary’s novel takes place in
Paris, but the narrative refrains from sugarcoating the city as a centre of fashion
and cosmopolites. The author manages to show Paris realistically, as the
metropolis that it is, with all its duality and the wear and tear of domestic quarrels
and street fights, which are fought on a daily basis. The child narrator, Momo,
describes old and young, native and immigrant, health and disease, as if they were
not opposites, but ordinary parts of daily life. 21st century society claims to be
enlightened and to regard life’s experiences mentioned above, as natural aspects of
life, which they are in fact, and the media pretends that we find a voice to discuss
those topics openly, but ideas like racism, immigration, and death still remain
taboos. At the beginning of this thesis, we have argued that putting a child at the
centre of a novel and allowing him to take over the narrative grants a voice to the
weakest members of society. Romain Gary attributes this voice to Momo and
additionally, the author allows his child narrator to discern the precarious
situation of people that are also deprived of a voice of their own. Romain Gary
draws attention to two minor ethnic groups in France: Momo is an Arab boy and
the child of a prostitute. The author puts his main character in a situation, where
he can voice criticism, without sounding condescending, because the narrator
himself belongs to the two socially challenged groups. In addition, Momo is a child
and thus, he does not occupy a social position that allows him to sound
condescending anyway. In that respect, we can turn to Tanner Tony, who when he
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characterizes Huckleberry Finn’s situation, sounds as if he were talking about

Momo:

[Huckleberry Finn] finds himself in a society whose sense of the moral has
obscured its feeling for the human, and so he has to adopt a flexible morality like,
which may include lying and stealing, in order not to betray his own best
promptings. The anarchic implications are strong for this reason: that Huck in his
own person demonstrates the need to dissolve social codified morality if man is to
remain true to his essential humanity. (TT 212)

When we listen to this statement, we can say that Momo finds himself in the same
situation, as Huckleberry Finn, a century before Romain Gary’s story took place.
Momo also needs to adopt a flexible morality that allows him to steal what he
needs, in order to survive, because money is rare at Madame Rosa’s. Yet, on the
other hand, Huck’s life differs from Momo’s, because in Momo’s world ‘the sense of
the moral has [not] obscured its feelings for the human.’ Although the setting,
where Momo grows up, is on the one hand, riven with human abuse and
corruption, people on the other hand stick together even more closely. Exceptional
living conditions lead to and demand the dissolution of the conventional moral
code that is commonly accepted by the middle class society. Upper-‐class society, in
general, and the lower-‐class society at the core of Romain Gary’s novel need to
reconstruct their own moral standards, by which each individual can live. Momo’s
interpretation of ethical behaviour illustrates that all ages need to adapt to their
social circumstances and that adults cannot separate their offspring from the social
setting, where those children grow up. Although Momo is still little informed about
prostitution and sexuality, the child still falls victim to the pull of the every day
events in his current social milieu. Romain Gary could of course also have
employed an adult narrator and illustrated just as effectively the consequences of
social restrictions for family life. Yet, Momo’s special domestic situation allows the
author to illustrate how a minor reacts to hardship, when he is not firmly guided
by an adult. Madame Rosa looks after Momo and helps him to survive, but the
woman does not lead a regulated life either. Romain Gary has managed to create a
more or less independent child character, who can, on the one hand, observe,
benefit, and learn from an adult world, but who, on the other hand, is detached
enough from regular family life, in order to illustrate how children react to social
challenges independently of their elders. The fact that Momo is a child narrator

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facilitates the illustration of the link between the external events and the internal,
mental or psychological growth of the child. Of course, the author could also
employ an omniscient adult narrator, who outlines the child’s physical and
psychological development in relation to his social context. However, the reader
feels more involved, when a character directly relates his own situation, than when
there is another narrator, who is just describing and commenting from the outside.
The vantage point in these two situations is slightly different and it depends on the
author, which effect he wants to create with his narrator.
Moreover, Borsch Jean points out that ‘the author’s system of broken-‐up
composition, of very short chapters each of which relates a single episode, allows
him to introduce small detached pieces under the guise of short stories.’42 These
short stories all relate different stories of love, hope, prostitution and otherness,
while at the same time, sharing the common message of how different lives are,
yet, how commonly they are lived, with the same need to belong to someone,
somewhere.
In addition, Momo’s life itself is a short version of a human life, because it
represents childhood, which is a small part of a complete, average human life.
Short stories have an internal logic of their own and a child has also a personally
coherent philosophy, by which he lives. Furthermore, short stories usually end in a
final conclusion, which is comparable to the different stages of a human life, which
would be in Momo’s case his childhood. Yet one could argue that a life moves from
one phase to another: from childhood, to adulthood, to old age. Yet, one short story
can also be the basis for another. Consequently, Romain Gary’s way of composing
his novel, based on a series of ‘short stories,’ mirrors the various stages a person
runs through, from his birth to his death.
Within his childhood phase, Momo’s life is also a composition of broken up
fragments that have been reconstructed to form a whole new identity. Momo’s
early childhood is a blur of fragments, while his encounters with foreigners are
also fragments that allow him to reconsider his own position in society, as an
immigrant child and orphan, while the loss of Madame Rosa later on, fragments the
child’s life and identity once again, before he can think of recreating an identity of
his own. Before we come to have another close look at the novel’s primary text, we

42 Boorsch, Jean. “Romain Gary.” Yale French Studies 8, What’s Novel in the Novel (1951): 51-‐55, 52.
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can mention here that Romain Gary had to grapple with identity himself, just like
his characters:

At a certain point, Gary concluded that, as a writer at least, he was tired of being
the famous Romain Gary. He wanted to be someone else. As he put it, quoting from
the Polish novelist Witold Gombrowicz, “there comes a day when a writer is held
prisoner by ‘la gueule qu’on lui a faite,’ the mug which the critics have given him –
an appearance which has nothing to do with his work or himself. (RG 185)

For one, the author exposes the idea that people define each other, on the basis of
first impressions, on hearsay or on their own standards and once an impression
has been created that perception of another individual seems to be set in stone. On
the one hand, people cling of course to the idea that their impression of another
person is accurate, because everybody wants to be right in his assumptions about
the world. Additionally, people are creatures of habit. Consequently, it is much
easier to assume that a person is always the same, because we can then react in a,
to us, similar way too, which makes human interaction and life, in general, much
easier, albeit less interesting and challenging.
In addition, not only the critics label the author, but the readers define the
narrator of a text, too. The reader conceives and defines the narrator. The initial
image that the narrator has adopted because of the reader becomes challenging to
alter throughout the later reading process. Of course, it is natural that the reader
views the narrator in a more or less consistent way throughout the novel, because
it is the reader, who interprets the character’s actions and attitude and since the
reader’s character and nature remains little altered for the duration of the reading
process, his view of the narrator also remains stable.
Additionally, the fact that the reader’s perception of a character is settled at
the beginning of the novel, and remains consistent throughout the reading
operation facilitates the creation of a convincing and coherent child narrator. If a
reader accepts that the narrator of a certain text is a ten-‐year-‐old child, the reader
has that image in mind, whenever he sits down to read that text. When the
narrator acts or speaks differently, than we would expect a child to act, then the
reader still subconsciously accepts the text as a child’s narrative, because his mind
associates the words with the image of a minor. That and the reader’s desire for
consistency and logic lead him to accept any way of expression, as that of a child
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narrator, because the reader wants to pursue the way of least confusion. Earlier
on, we have argued that it does not depend on how realistic a child narrator is, in
order for the reader to accept him, but on the novel’s coherency as a whole. Now,
we can add that it does not just depend on the author’s talent to render a novel or a
story internally coherent, but also on the reader’s ability to make sense of the story
as a whole and to ignore inconsistencies as a necessary part of the story.
Romain Gary has felt constricted by the image the critics have given him.
Similarly, the author also manages to convey the fate of those people that have
been defined and classified as substandard, by society. Romain Gary illustrates the
lives of prostitutes and immigrants, who have been stigmatized. When a person
has defined another person, then it might be disagreeable to be always viewed
from the same perspective and especially, if people have understood you wrongly,
according to your own perception of yourself. Yet, if the stigma a person has given
another individual is positive, like in Romain Gary’s case, then the consequences
are still mostly beneficial. For example, if the critics view Romain Gary as a
generally talented writer, then he enjoys the liberty to produce a mediocre text
and critics will view his creation as a one-‐off disappointment, even if in fact his
masterpieces were one-‐offs. Thus, people can also benefit from a stigma that other
people (falsely) attribute to them.
In contrast, it can also be the case that people attract negative
stigmatization, even as a whole group, like Arab people in The Life Before Us. In
that case, the stigma a person attracts does not depend on individuality, character,
and personal attitude anymore, but on social and ethnical background.
Additionally, the way people portray themselves, by the way they dress,
triggers stigmatization by others:

They looked at me like a lump of shit. My rags were terrible, I felt it right away. I
had a cap that was always standing up in back because I have too much hair and an
overcoat that hung down to my heels. When you snatch garmentry, you haven’t got
time to measure if the stuff is too big or too little, you’re in a hurry. They didn’t say
anything, but we weren’t from the same block. (RG 147/ 148)

An adult narrator could just as easily address the reality that there are
discrepancies between social classes and that there are a large number of adults
and children, who suffer from financial hardship. Yet, turning a child into the
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observer of and commentator on class differences is more poignant, because the

reader gets a first-‐hand account of what it feels like for a child to live in financial
hardship. Adults generally assume that adults suffer more from a lack of money,
because adults are the caretakers of and providers for the family. It might be true
that children do not feel the psychological pressure generated by hardship as much
as adults, because children do not feel responsible to such an extent as their elders.
Yet, socially deprived children also notice the difference in appearance and
behaviour between themselves and children, who belong to a different social class.
An adult narrator could raise the same social issue, but the attained effect would
be a different one.
In relation to child narrators, it is easier for an author to address the reader
on a more or less neutral level, if the narrator is a child. People stigmatize children
less readily, according to their social or ethnical background. Or if people judge
and stigmatize, like in Momo’s case, then people judge adult behaviour and not the
child’s manners. The reader assumes that adults have failed to secure a future for
Momo and he does not judge Momo for his poor attire. A child narrator allows the
reader to form an opinion of the world, based on the narrator, yet without judging
the narrator. As a consequence, the reader remains unbiased and open to the child
narrator’s criticism and portrayal of the world, while remaining in the position to
react critically.
Jane McKee comments that ‘love, too, plays an important part in Gary’s
fiction, and, in keeping with the romantic tradition, it is a perfect love, bringing
warmth and comfort and free from all the humdrum problems which beset human
relationships in ordinary life’ (JMK 60). Of course, on the one hand, Jane McKee is
right, when she identifies the love between Madame Rosa and Momo as an
innocent and unconditionally loyal connection that lasts until death sets in. Yet, on
the other hand, ‘the warmth and comfort’ that Jane McKee perceives in the novel’s
relationships is at times also the character’s illusion or wishful thinking. Momo is a
child and he craves, of course, unconditional love. Thus, it is understandable that
there must be a dimension of unconditional love present in the book, because that
feeling is what the characters are looking for.
On the other hand, we can ask the question to what extent Madame Rosa is
capable of feeling ‘perfect love.’ Madame Rosa is an ex-‐prostitute with no deeper
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social connections and no remaining family. People all her life have trampled
Momo’s caretaker. Her sexual relations were commonly devoid of love, since they
were based on business and she has never managed to form any deeper human
relations. Thus, it is debatable to what extent Madame Rosa is capable of forming a
deep inter human connection with Momo, when she has never experienced or
learned how to react to other people without being on guard.
Consequently, one can say that the characters and the reader idealize the
relationship between Momo and Madame Rosa, when they identify their bond as
‘perfect.’ Viewing the relation between adult and child as an opportunistic contract
would offer a bleak outlook on the world, but would sound more plausible, as a
conclusion to the foregoing analysis of their union. One could say that the
relationship between Madame Rosa and Momo is not one founded on human love
and a necessity for warmth, but that it is an alliance created out of fear; the fear of
facing the world alone and of dying alone. Both characters are in need of support,
because one person has been exploited and both have been rejected by society. So
both characters hold on to each other and develop the illusion that they bring each
other comfort and warmth.
Moreover, the relationship between Momo and Madame Rosa is tainted by
social and financial problems. It may be true that Madame Rosa and Momo’s
problems are different to that of a regular ‘couple,’ yet they do have problems,
which they would not have as individual people. Of course, this diagnosis sounds
negative at first, but it also illustrates that there is some sort of love between
Momo and Madame Rosa, which makes them stay together, although they could
steer clear of certain hardship, by going their separate ways, like Momo, who could
escape the encounter with death, if he left Madame Rosa.
Since Momo is a child, he allows Madame Rosa to act out of pure love,
because he cannot offer her anything: the child cannot pay Madame Rosa any
money, nor can he protect her from any harm. Seen from that point of view, the
relationship between the two characters is that of pure affection, because they
allow each other to be, who they are, without asking questions or without
demanding anything. The relationship between Momo and Madame Rosa expands
even to that extent that Momo completely identifies himself with his former
caretaker: ‘[I ]was cold during the night. I got up and put another blanket over
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[her]’ (RG 163). Now, Momo has taken up the position of caretaker. Earlier on, we
have argued that Momo has nothing to offer Madame Rosa, but this scene
illustrates that Momo has to offer his full dedication to and investment in a
relationship. This attitude stands in contrast to our current materialistic 21st
century stance.
Moreover, the role reversal between Madame Rosa and Momo only works,
because Momo is a child. If Momo were an adult narrator the full affectionate effect
of one person caring for another would be lost, because we expect adults to look
after each other in times of illness, but we assume that children despair in such a
situation and do not know how to react. Of course, this assumption is a
generalization, but the point I want to make is that a child, who merges his identity
to such an extent with a grown up that he feels the need to cover her when he feels
cold, appeals more to the reader’s sentiment, than an adult carrying out the same
action.
Momo appeals to the reader’s common sense and shows that the obvious
and plain is at times the only route to pursue: ‘Madame Rosa’s absences were
getting longer and longer, and sometimes she didn’t feel anything for hours on end.
[…] I’d sit on the stool beside her, take her hand, and wait for her to come back’ (RG
98). As I have argued earlier on, children do not feel the need to act according to
social conventions, because they have no reference point to compare to. If children
have a well-‐developed opinion of what is ethically and socially acceptable, within
their cultural context, then the child’s level of consciousness has been fostered by
adult teaching or role model behaviour. In Momo’s case, the child had to develop
his own ethical standards, based on natural intuition and on personal experience.
Momo’s age and his social situation prevent him from seeking medical help that
would maybe be superfluous, since in vain, anyway. Thus, by putting a child
narrator at the centre of his novel, Romain Gary manages to bring his story to a
standstill, because the child character lacks the maturity and experience to resort
to any action. The reader and the characters get the chance to pause for a moment
and to assimilate or absorb the story’s events. The plain and fanciless is
highlighted, as the most effective remedy. The social and financial security that
people strive to attain does not necessarily lead to genuine human understanding,
emotional maturity, and security. Children as young as ten, like Momo, learn how
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to form stable and mature relationships independently of age and social

background. In the end, it is not Social Welfare or money that secures Madame
Rosa’s future, but her genuine care for a new generation and for those children
that are generally rejected by society.
Finally, the role reversal of adult and child, also illustrates the idea that the
reader’s assumptions are just general ideas that we have in mind and that the
ability to take care of a person or to act like an adult, does not necessarily depend
on age, but on individual understanding and on the personal desire to care for
someone else. In Momo’s situation, notions like ‘time’ and ‘age’ become irrelevant.
The narrator’s age only plays a role for the reader, because that fact alters the
reader’s perception of the world and his attitude towards children and people’s
behaviour in general. However, for Madame Rosa it is irrelevant if a child or an
adult is looking after her. What matters to her is the fact that somebody is taking
care of her at all and that a person is close to her, because she finds herself in a
daunting and degrading situation, where one wants to be surrounded by people,
whom one can trust: ‘I ran and kissed her. She didn’t smell good because she’d shat
and pissed in her pants by reason of her condition. I kissed her even more because
I didn’t want her to think she disgusted me’ (RG 150). Momo allows Madame Rosa to
be as she is. The real innocent love that Momo displays ignores the unpleasant
reality that has invaded their home. The role reversal that has taken place, where
the child cares for the adult does not take place, because nature has intended
Momo to care for Madame Rosa or because someone has asked the child to look
after the adult, like a grown-‐up, but it is the unusual condition and the unusual
circumstances Momo grew up in, which render Momo apt as a caretaker.
Additionally, a child narrator reminds the reader of the fact that life is
composed of different stages that are interlinked. The whole of life is in fact a
coherent cycle and people in advanced age are a lot like they were as children:
‘After they left, Moïse and me undressed Madame Rosa from top to toe and cleaned
her up with Clorox, because she’d soiled herself during her absence. Then we
powdered her ass with baby powder and put her back in her armchair, where she
liked to reign’ (RG 118). The story constantly comes back to the ideas of birth and
death, which are closely interlinked in the story. In order to be able to talk about
birth, the writer was clever to include a child. Talking about birth and looking for
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one’s date of birth makes more sense in relation to a child. An adult, who has
succeeded in constructing a personally balanced life style, is not defined by his
origin anymore. An adult can construct and justify his identity in relation to his
social network of friends and partners, to his education and work or to his
religious disposition or social attitude. A child however does not have many
parameters to fix his identity onto. Momo says:

That’s what started me worrying about my mother. Everybody seemed to have one
but me. I began getting stomach cramps and convulsions to make her come and see
me. On the sidewalk across the street there was a kid with a ball, who told me his
mother always came to see him when he had a stomach ache. I had myself a
stomach ache, but it didn’t get me anything. (RG 4)

The child narrator can comment on his own internal reflections that lead to the
actions that the reader and the people surrounding him perceive. An adult narrator
could also observe the development of a child, who was separated from his
biological parents at birth. Yet, the focus on the child’s internal world would be lost
in that case.
In contrast to the relationship between Madame Rosa and Momo stands the
relationship between Momo’s parents. At the beginning of the book, the reader
assumes that the identity of Momo’s father is unknown, but the father suddenly
appears on Madame Rosa’s doorstep and discloses the fact that he has killed the
child’s mother, who was also a prostitute: ‘I acted in a fit of jealousy. Think of it. Up
to twenty tricks a day. In the end I got jealous and killed her. I admit it. But I am not
responsible. I was certified by the best French doctors. I didn’t remember a thing
afterwards. I loved her madly. I couldn’t live without her’ (RG 124). Momo also loves
Madame Rosa madly, but he does not resort to killing her, but to prolonging her
life, beyond death, because Momo keeps watch by Madame Rosa’s side for several
days after her death. The child’s way of altering his reality is more harmless, but
equally mad. The two scenes illustrate that the fear of losing a person can lead
people of all ages to resort to extraordinary behaviour. Momo’s situation shows
that the new generation and the old generation are equally affected when middle-‐
aged people fail to organize their life according to socially accepted conventions
within a certain cultural setting.
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Tanner Tony originally analyzed Huckleberry Finn’s situation, when he said
that

indeed Huck is a modern type of hero: a hero with no power to remedy the
unbearable wrongs he sees in the world, a hero by dint of his inner honesty and
the equality of his impartial sensitivity only -‐ a person who is heroic in flight. He is
detached and lonely as all innocents are and his allegiance is to an inner range of
feeling, but this is not to say that he is fully immersed in the world at large. (TT
212)

On a first level, Momo is unable to alter reality, because he is a child and not in the
leading position that could allow him to take substantial action. Consequently, a
child narrator is a perfect fit for the role of modern hero, as Tony Tanner sees him,
because the child can portray the current human condition, without offering an
alleged miracle cure. Momo’s character and situation is comparable to Huckleberry
Finn’s existence.
Moreover, Momo is also detached from his roots, because he does not know
anything about his parents and he feels lonely in a world that he does not
understand. He tries to find comfort, by making friends with a prostitute, but at the
same time, Momo needs to emotionally detach himself from Madame Rosa, in
order to protect himself from too much hurt, because the old woman is about to
die. In the end, the reader sees that Momo is still a child who cannot consciously
make the decision to create the necessary distance between himself and Madame
Rosa, because he remains with her dead body in the cellar for a week and keeps
watch:

I spread some makeup on her lips and cheeks and painted her eyebrows the way
she liked. I made her eyelids blue and white and pasted little stars on them like she
did. I tried to put on false eyelashes but they wouldn’t stick. I could see she’d
stopped breathing, but it was all the same to me, I loved her even without
breathing. (RG 178)

Part of the readers might argue that in this passage, Momo tries to alter reality,
because he is blinded by love and he does not want to accept that the most
important person in his life has died. In contrast, Momo’s wish for Madame Rosa to
continue living can also be seen, as the child’s deep fear to face the world on his
own and is maybe more driven by internal anxiety, than by a deeper emotional
connection to Madame Rosa. In addition, putting makeup on Madame Rosa’s face
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gives Momo something to occupy himself with and to take his mind off her death.
The layers of make-‐up help to conceal reality and make it easier for the child to
look at the dead body.
Yet, on the other hand, Momo tries to ‘embellish’ his friend and to make her
look the way ‘she liked it.’ Momo does not arbitrarily put colour on Madame Rosa’s
face, but he tries to reproduce Madame Rosa’s reality and not embellish his own.
Seen from that perspective, Momo’s love is altruistic, since he does not benefit
from putting make-‐up on Madame Rosa’s face, because that will not bring her back
to life and it will not secure Momo’s future, in any way. The child keeping watch, by
the dead woman’s body, reminds the reader indeed of ‘romantic love’ and appeals
to the reader’s sympathy. The reader is observing the intimate moment, when a
child is confronted with the death of a beloved one, for the first time, and is
struggling to come to terms with death’s mercilessness. In that respect, the reader
can also understand the scene as overtly romantic, like Jane McKee has argued
earlier on. It depends on the reader’s attitude to romanticism and to kitsch, to
which extent he allows sentimental scenes to be part of a novel, without
condemning the whole text as an overtly emotional tearjerker.
In relation to child narrators, the final scene between Momo and Madame
Rosa only works to perfection between a child and an adult. If an adult narrator
would tamper with a dead person’s body, the reader would feel embarrassed and
the passage would allude to necrophilia or sexually deviant actions. How people
define love and which forces motivate people to remain together depends on each
individual. Yet, which becomes clear in the relationship between Momo and
Madame Rosa is the idea that the novel’s core relationship setting can only
function with the cast of a child narrator. If Madame Rosa had been living with an
adult, the innocence would have been removed from the relationship and Madame
Rosa’s past sexuality would have moved into the foreground, because an intimate
relationship between two adults evokes images of sexual involvement. Even if the
characters would affirm their platonic friendship, the reader would still associate
two adults living together with the idea of a shared sexuality, especially if one of
the two had formerly worked as a prostitute. Of course, interpreting adult
interaction with a dead corpse as sexually deviant, while allowing the child the
freedom to come to terms with death, in his own manner and time, is a personal
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interpretation and varies from one reader to another. Additionally, the reader’s
interpretation also depends on his culture and social background. Thus, the device
of the child narrator might function well as transmitter of a message in one culture,
while another culture might reject the idea of a child closely interacting with death.
The reader’s reaction to Momo and Madame Rosa’s relationship beyond
death also reveals the reader’s cultural setting and his social attitude towards
death and of how to deal with illness and bereavement:

Then she didn’t say anything at all, just sat there looking empty at the wall and
shitting and pissing in her chair.
There’s something I’ve got to tell you. Such things shouldn’t be. That’s my honest
opinion. I’ll never understand why abortion is only allowed for the young and not
for the old. In my opinion the guy in America who beat the world’s vegetable
record was worse than Jesus, because he stayed on the cross for seventeen years
and then some. In my opinion, there is nothing crummier than ramming life down
the throats of defenceless people who’ve had enough. (RG 175)

On the one hand, Momo’s previous comments about prostitution and now his
comments about euthanasia sound inoffensive to the reader, because Momo’s
comments are just that: comments. Momo talks in a very factual way about
prostitution and euthanasia and the reader buys into the child’s non-‐judgmental
description of his environment. The author manages to create this effect, because
Momo is a child. Although Momo grows up in a milieu nerved with sexual deviance
and daily hardship, he still has limited access to the complete truth and reality
behind the scenes. Momo explains what he sees and hears, but he lacks the
understanding of the entire picture, in order to make full sense of his experiences.
Momo is unaware of the political debate related to euthanasia and of the question
at what point a person’s life-‐sustaining machines can be switched off. Yet, there is
an undeniable truth in the child’s words. Although the reader is aware that there is
actually an adult author at the source of Momo’s words, the reader still accepts the
words as those of a child, because Momo is not debating or pondering the question
or referring to political correctness, like adults commonly do, but the child
narrator in this case is just plainly stating his truth and expects his readers to
accept his reality and outlook on the world.
In contrast, we have earlier on said that Momo points out social
shortcomings in a very factual way. However, the effect that is created in the
reader is one of shock, because the child character uses very strong language to get
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his point across. Romain Gary puts words and expressions like ‘shitting,’ ‘pissing,’
and ‘ramming life down the throat of a person,’ in his narrator’s mouth. As a
consequence, it is not the child’s talent for debate nor his logical argumentation
that convince the reader of the narrator’s firm point of view, but the crude
language that we do not usually associate with a child’s world, but that accurately
mirrors the barbaric conditions that the narrator is addressing in his speech.
Romain Gary employs his child narrator as a tool that is meant to disclose social
questions, but that allows the author to retain any judgment that could influence
the reader’s own thinking. When a story is narrated by a child, the reader is urged
to make up his own mind and to ponder the accuracy of the child’s statement
within his own current social, ethical and ethnical context.
In addition to the love between Momo and Madame Rosa, there is Momo’s
affection for his dog:

when I took him out walking, I felt important, because I was all he had in the world.
I loved him so much that I finally gave him away. I was nine by then, or
thereabouts, and at that age you begin to think, except maybe if you are happy.
Besides, between you and me, without wanting to hurt anybody’s feelings, it was
gloomy at Madame Rosa’s, even when you were used to it. So when Super started
growing on me, emotionally speaking, I decided to give him a better life. I’d have
done the same for myself if I’d been able. (RG 13)

This scene also just functions, because Momo is a child character and narrator,
because this scene clearly illustrates to which extent the child assumes mature
thinking, in contrast to the adult, who remains egoistic and possessive. Momo
identifies the dog’s miserable living conditions and gives him away, because he
‘loves him so much.’ Momo achieves, what Madame Rosa is incapable of, namely
separating her own fear from Momo’s life and ‘setting him free,’ in order to lead a
happier, more untroubled life. If Momo were an adult, he could ‘set himself free,’ by
just walking out on Madame Rosa, but the fact that he is a child binds him to his
environment to a certain extent. Of course, there are also adults, who remain
frozen and stuck in their daily routine, although they feel miserable. Yet, it is easier
for an adult to fend for himself, than for a child. Especially, because a child is more
emotionally attached to the people that have shaped his early years and thus, it
becomes a challenge for a child to walk out on his educator.
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Additionally, there is Momo’s relation to an umbrella he calls Arthur: ‘I

couldn’t give him up over night in spite of the four years I’d suddenly put on. Other
people take a lot longer to put on four years, and I wasn’t going to let anyone hurry
me’ (RG 162). One cannot really say that there is ‘love’ between Momo and an object.
Yet, the umbrella embodies Momo’s childhood and it is the love for his youth that
makes Momo cling to that object that he constantly carries around with him. On a
first level, the reader can interpret Momo, who is hanging on to his umbrella, as a
metaphor for nowadays’ youth, who has to give up on their childhood all too early,
because of social circumstances or because of the confrontation with advanced
media. It makes sense that a child narrator draws attention to the children’s need
to stay in a fantasy world of their own, until they naturally and gradually develop
into mature adults. Momo highlights that it is not people’s age that defines their
desire to take their own decisions and to look after themselves, but that outer
circumstances direct people’s psychological and emotional development: ‘”Tell me,
Doctor, are you sure I’m fourteen? Are you sure I’m not twenty or thirty or even
more? First the story is ten, then fourteen. Couldn’t I be a midget, damn it all?’ (RG
158). This paragraph illustrates that the attitudes of the people surrounding Momo
define who he is. On the one hand, Momo has to act like and adult, because he
grows up in a little inviting environment: ‘I’m not a child in the first place. I’m the
son of a whore and my father killed my mother. When a kid knows that, he knows
everything there is to know and he’s not a child anymore’ (RG 156). Of course, in
that respect, the question arises if knowledge can make a child more mature, or if a
child remains in a minor’s frame of mind for the time being., until he can process
the new information. Here we can say that knowledge or orally transmitted facts
themselves do not change a child’s level of maturity. However, information like the
social history of Momo’s parents lead to and are linked to a different social setting,
which the child is propelled into. This change in atmosphere and setting alter the
child’s level of development and maturity and not knowledge itself.
On the other hand, Madame Rosa tells Momo that he is four years younger
than he actually is, in order to keep him by her side. The reader understands that
treating people like children manipulates them to such an extent that they become
dependant of other people’s support. The age you feel is always conditioned, by
what you are told to act like and by what other people expect you to act like. In
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Momo’s case, the people surrounding him treat him alternately as a child or as an
adult, depending on their needs and on their personal demands. Thus, Momo clings
to Arthur his umbrella and similarly to his childhood, because growing up would
also mean deciding on an identity of his own, which he has not had the chance to
construct so far, because his caretakers have alternately altered his identity, in
order to satisfy their needs.
On the one hand, the reader wonders, why Momo clings to his childhood to
such a degree, because his youth is certainly not desirable in many aspects. On the
other hand, Momo currently has a place to live and a person he belongs to. If Momo
were an adult, he would need to fend for himself. He does not have any education,
nor does he know, which direction to pursue in life. It might be a generalization,
but children tend to orientate their lives, in relation to their parents, or to the
broader circle of the grown-‐ups surrounding them. Either children want to be like
their role models or they intend to walk in a completely opposite direction. In
Momo’s case, the child cannot adopt the same lifestyle, as his foster mother. Yet
attempting to get an education or to start an apprenticeship is a scary thought for
Momo, too, because he has nobody in his immediate surroundings, who has taken
up that path and whom he could aspire to. Consequently, it is understandable that
Momo hesitates to grow up.
Moreover, the fact that Momo is still a child allows him to attract people and
primarily, Madame Rosa’s attention. If Momo accepts the fact that he is actually
older than he thought he was, he also accepts the loss of Madame Rosa’s care.
Momo’s love for his childhood reflects, at the same time, his affection for Madame
Rosa: ‘I can assure you that some whores are the best of mothers, because it’s a
change from their customers and besides a kid gives them a future. Of course there
are some that drop out of sight and you never hear of them again, but that doesn’t
mean they’re not dead or haven’t got some other excuse’ (RG 30). Vice-‐versa,
Madame Rosa has not disclosed Momo’s real age to the child, because children
‘give their parents a future,’ as Momo accurately observes. Although Momo is not
Madame Rosa’s biological child, he still secures the woman’s future, because he
looks after her until her death. In a way, this scenario is only possible, because
Momo is still a child, or because Momo believes that he is younger, than he actually
is and consequently, does not want to leave ‘home’ yet. If Momo were an adult
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narrator, then he would comment on Madame Rosa’s physical and mental decline,
but he would be more physically and emotionally detached. An adult narrator
would react in a more factual, practically oriented way and would not colour the
story in such a romantically caring way.
In contrast, one could also argue that an adult narrator could even look at
his childhood in a more nostalgic way, than a child narrator, who examines his
immediate and current situation, because looking back at the past commonly
induces people to embellish their memories.
Finally, Momo says: ‘people need millions and millions to feel concerned,
and you can’t blame them, because little things don’t amount to much’ (RG 146). Yet,
by putting a child narrator at the centre of his novel, Romain Gary manages to
show that ‘little things’ do amount to much, because Momo achieves to reach and
illicit the thinking process of a large amount of readers. Even if we are critical and
point out that Momo is the author’s construct and that it is not really a child, who
reaches the audience, but an adult, then we can still say that it is one single person
that reaches a larger amount of people and consequently, ‘little things still amount
to much.’
In conclusion, Momo’s narrative is on the one hand, an apprenticeship
novel, because the novel

recounts the childhood and young adulthood of a character in order to show how
he or she develops and changes through experience and spiritual crisis. It
emphasizes the importance of early years upon later choices and behavior, and the
gradual elaboration of a philosophy of life.43

Françoise Grellet highlights that ‘such novels usually end when heroes have
reached a sense of identity and a clearer understanding of their own values and
purposes’ (FG 126). Of course, Momo grows because of his experiences and he
survives Madame Rosa’s death. Since Momo has access to all kinds of narcotic
substances, the child could just as well have killed himself, by taking an overdose
of drugs or alcohol, because he cannot cope with the emotional pressure he is
exposed to and because he has no other person to turn to after Madame Rosa’s
death. So in a way, we can say that Momo has overcome his ‘spiritual crisis’ and

43 Grellet, Françoise. Literature in English: Anthologie des Littératures du Monde Anglophone. Paris:
Hachette Supérieur. 2002, 126 – Further references are included in the text (FG).
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that the experiences he had to go through have helped the child to grow into an
adult, whose experiences have rendered him more resilient towards the world’s
challenges.
Yet, the novel ends with Madame Rosa’s death and the reader remains in
the dark about Momo’s future. Françoise Grellet argues that at the end of an
apprenticeship novel, the hero has reached ‘a sense of identity and a clearer
understanding of his own values and purposes.’ Yet, in Momo’s case, the child had
to suffer from such a traumatic loss and has been abandoned by his parents and
then by Madame Rosa. Although Momo’s foster mother has died a natural death, to
Momo her death still embodies a personal loss. Consequently, the reader is left to
wonder whether the child does not feel like unworthy of stable attention and
consistent adult devotion and whether he will ever develop a ‘sense of identity,’
because people have lied to him about his self all his life.
The title The Life Before Us, reminds the reader of our lives that lie ahead of
us. Every day is a new beginning, yet the question remains whether every day is
influenced and already tainted by previous experiences. Jane McKee sums up that

in the midst of all this diversity, however, there is a fundamental unity, provided
on the one hand by a permanent concern with the problems of mankind and with
the human situation in general and on the other by a creative imagination
dominated by a love of what is strange, colourful, beautiful, grotesque or in any
way unusual or outstanding. (JMK 60)

Momo’s narrative illustrates that the past makes up part of the future, but that
one’s actions can alter the course of events, on a daily basis; subtly but effectively.
The reader observes Momo and his choices and we see how his life develops, by
Madame Rosa’s side, and at certain points, the reader feels the urge to advise
Momo to get adult help and to spare himself the encounter with death. Yet, on the
other hand, the reader is silenced, because he cannot interfere and the reader has
to acknowledge that Momo’s life and character would not be what they are, if
Momo’s life had been directed by other people or by different adults. The child’s
narrative achieves to convey the message that young lives can be lived with limited
adult influence and that the outcome is each time unique and sufficient in itself.
The fact that Momo is a child narrator creates a level of suspense that expands
beyond the story itself, because there is Momo’s whole life, which is still waiting
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for him, after the story in the novel has already ended, so that the reader is left to
wonder, what will happen of Momo in later years to come.

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4.2. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer
The 21st century novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was written by the young
American author Jonathan Safran Foer. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close stands in
contrast to The Life Before Us, because the two novels stem from authors with
different social, ethical and cultural background. Consequently, the reader might
think that the two texts differ greatly, in terms of their content and in terms of the
way their content is presented. Yet, Jonathan Safran Foer and Romain Gary have
both chosen to put a child narrator at the centre of their novels. It is
understandable that an author like Romain Gary wanted to put a child at the centre
of his narrative, because it was the author’s intention to voice social criticism. The
figure of the child narrator has allowed Romain Gary to highlight the social
shortcomings of his time and social context, while creating a certain amount of
distance between himself and his character’s ideas. If Romain Gary had put an
adult narrator at the centre of his novel, then critics could have made a much
tighter link between himself and the fictional text. Of course, there is no doubt that
the author always remains the source of the text that he produces, yet, the way in
which an author presents his text renders the author’s voice either more palpable
or more subtle for the reader, depending on the tool that the author chooses, in
order to propagate his message.
In the foregoing discussions, we have established the numerous literary
advantages that a child narrator can contribute, in order to render a novel a
success. Additionally, we have also highlighted, why an author like Romain Gary
would resort to employing a child narrator. However, why would Jonathan Safran
Foer want to use a child character as the transmitter of his novel’s message?
Although Jonathan Safran Foer lives and works in a different social and cultural
setting, than Romain Gary, could it still be the case that the young author wants to
distance his character from his own persona, in order to voice social criticism
more freely? After all, Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel concentrates on the terrorist
attacks of 9/11 and discusses a delicate topic.
Moreover, at the beginning of the thesis at hand we have argued that
children had to die in real life, in order to find a literary voice. However, since
Jonathan Safran Foer is an author of our modern times, the reader might wonder
to what extent an author still needs to grant children a voice nowadays, since
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Jonathan Safran Foer lives in a society that directs psychological, political and
educational attention on children anyway. Yet, in contrast, literature to a great
extent mirrors the reality of the time in which the text was produced.
Consequently, it is logical that a young modern author picks up on his current
society’s need to discuss the child’s status and to point out the most beneficial
support for young people.
Yet, when I was doing research and looking for clues that could help me to
answer the question, why Jonathan Safran Foer has chosen a child narrator for his
novel, I came across answers for an interview that Jonathan Safran Foer has given
a journalist for the newspaper Mother Jones. In this interview, Jonathan Safran Foer
gives clear reasons, why he tells his story in a child’s voice. The author’s reasons
contradict all of my previous guesses, but the novel’s success shows that the
author’s motives were founded on good judgement:

Mother Jones (MJ): Did you feel like you were taking a risk dealing with 9/11 in
Extremely Loud?

Jonathan Safran Foer (JSF): Actually, I think it’s a greater risk not to write about
it. If you’re in my position—a New Yorker who felt the event very deeply and a
writer who wants to write about things he feels deeply about—I think it’s risky to
avoid what’s right in front of you. None of the ways people were talking about
September 11 felt right to me. I don’t buy into the way Bush talks about it. I don’t
buy into the way the 9/11 commission talks about it. It isn’t that I don’t believe
them. It’s just that they’re not the tellings for me.44

Politicians and people in charge of controlling the situation have another
perspective on the events of 9/11, than the common citizen, who had to bare the
impact of the attack on a different level. Adults, who are not in a position to find a
solution against terrorist attacks or to prevent future attacks, can still go out and
work as immediate helpers on the affected territory. According to Craig Beyerlein,
‘expressing solidarity with victims through volunteering […] helped to create a
meaningful collective identity that generated emotional energy for taking action.’45
Children, however, are removed from the situation and it seems that children are
forgotten during the time it takes for life to take up its routine again. Of course, this

44 Wolf Schenk, Joshua. “Jonathan Safran Foer: Living to Tell the Tale.” Motherjones.com:
http://motherjones.com/media/2005/05/jonathan-‐safran-‐foer -‐ Further references are included

in the text (JWS).
45 Beyerlein, Craig and David Sikkink. “Sorrow and Solidarity: Why Americans Volunteered for 9/11
Relief Efforts.” Social Problems 55.2 (May 2008): 190-‐215, 196.

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impression does not hold true, because psychologists and parents attend to
children, when a catastrophe has taken place. Yet, children are removed from the
immediate focus of the media and of the parents’ attention, because the adults
have to attend to the needs of the situation at large. Jonathan Safran Foer’s idea of
putting a child’s reality at the centre of his novel reminds the reader of the fact that
the grander political and social scheme also affects the smallest members of
society, even if that truth does not constantly remain apparent.
In contrast, Laura Miller criticizes Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, when
she says that:

in a novel about the Holocaust, this kind of oblique, even playful, strategy worked,
partly because the subject has already been so exhaustively and earnestly
explored. But September 11, that spectacular monstrosity plopped into the middle
of an ordinary Tuesday in downtown Manhattan, is another matter. We’re still not
entirely sure what it signifies, or even if, philosophically speaking (…), it might
signify nothing at all. It may just be too early to get cute in writing about
September 11; on the other hand, there’s never a good time to get as cute as
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close gets. (LM)

Laura Miller deems the child’s voice too cute, in order to narrate a novel with a
serious matter from a child’s perspective. The critic argues that a shocking topic
like 9/11 can only be treated from a child’s perspective, when it has already been
discussed under any other, so-‐called, serious or political light. However, who
decides which approach to a painful event helps people most effectively to deal
with it? Why cannot a child’s light-‐hearted voice offer as much relief and a fresh
outlook on grief as a solemn and serious attitude? People can be very serious about
and engaged in a social issue, while at the same time keeping their good humour.
The fact that Jonathan Safran Foer puts a child at the centre of his novel does not
mean that the writer wants to trivialize the difficulty of 9/11, but the author’s text
mirrors his interest in the events of his time.
Moreover, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close also highlights the universal
truth that people speak about and deal with problems differently. At least, the
writer has found a way to express his concerns in relation to the terrorist attacks
in his country and has managed to render these worries palpable, while the
majority of people have been silenced by the impact of 9/11. The child narrator
can also stand as a metaphor for a small entity that is repressed. In Extremely Loud
& Incredibly Close, Oskar represents the United States of America. Like Oskar, who
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has lost his father and other ancestors, even before he was born, the United States
have lost many people through wars, illness, terrorism and the more. Oskar
operates as a minor scale reflection of the country he lives in.
Additionally, Oskar Schell is taken as much by surprise, by the attacks of
9/11, as the United States themselves. Accordingly, the United States take on a
powerless status, like a child. This situation shows us that the power of an entity
depends on circumstances. Grown-‐ups, even in high-‐ranking positions, are as
powerless, when confronted with unknown situations as a child.

MJ: How did the idea for Oskar first come to you?

JSF: My test for writing is always, is this fun or does it feel like a job? Is it moving
me? Or am I just fulfilling my own expectations—or even worse, somebody else’s?
I was working on another story and I just started to feel the drag of it. And so, as a
side project, I got interested in the voice of this kid. I thought maybe it could be a
story; maybe it would be nothing. I found myself spending more and more time on
it and wanting to work on that. (JWS)

Jonathan Safran Foer manages to make his child narrator sound like an
independent person, with a character of his own and not like a figure that the
author has invented. I suppose that once the writer has an idea of his protagonist
in mind, the child’s way of expression comes about naturally, because the writer
has a global idea in mind of his figure’s nature. Yet, according to Laura Miller,

Oskar resembles nothing so much as a plastic bag crammed with oddities. For
every eccentricity that makes psychological sense – fear of public transportation or
an overly clinical interest in the bombing of Hiroshima, for example – there’s
another that’s just piled on. We never learn why Oskar insists on wearing only
white or plays the tambourine incessantly. (LM)

While Jonathan Safran Foer explains that he has allowed his creativity to take over,
when he was constructing Oskar’s character, Laura Miller criticizes that the author
has not succeeded in bestowing psychological realism on his child character. On
the one hand, Laura Miller is right, when she says that Oskar is like ‘a plastic bag
crammed with oddities,’ because the child displays numerous fads and spleens that
pepper the complete narrative. Laura Miller makes this diagnosis sound like a
negative feature, though and it seems as if the critic wants to point out that
Jonathan Safran Foer has failed at creating a psychologically coherent character.
However, Oskar has experienced deep psychological and emotional trauma and no
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one can accurately predict, which and how many oddities an individual develops,
as a consequence to a personal ordeal. Consequently, labelling Jonathan Safran
Foer’s novel as a psychologically unrealistic construct is mere speculation.
Additionally, Laura Miller criticizes the fact that the reader never gets to
know, why Oskar behaves the way he does. Of course, the most obvious
explanation for the character’s strange manners is self-‐explanatory: when a child
has lost his father in a terrorist attack, then there is little room left for wondering,
why a child starts to act in a peculiar way. So why would an author need to
highlight this obvious factor even more?
Moreover, every individual has odd ticks, which have developed and
emerged over time, but for most of these fads, we ignore, which events in our lives
have triggered a tick or another. In that respect, Jonathan Safran Foer’s approach
of leaving certain information in the story unexplained is a true to life method.
Furthermore, Mother Jones has asked:

MJ: When you’re writing about a small child, do you develop protective feelings the
way you would with a real child?

JSF: Definitely, and that was one of the things that was painful about the book. I
knew I couldn’t give him what he wanted. I felt protective of him, but I was also
creating the harms that befell him. It was a relationship that I felt deeply. (JWS)

To me it is interesting to read that the feelings the child narrator provokes in the
reader are the same feelings that are produced in the writer. On the one hand, the
writer’s statement provokes the reader, because it makes his audience wonder,
why Jonathan Safran Foer does not change the events in his story, in order to come
to a happy end, when he and the reader are suffering, when they are confronted
with the story’s tragedy.
On the other hand, people want to be confronted with reality, as painful as it
might be, rather than having to deal with the illusion of perfection. A child narrator
himself can render a story softer and more melodramatic, because of the child’s
innocent tone of voice and because of his naivety. Accordingly, the author can and
needs to opt for a more challenging topic, which can end in human disaster, in
order to maintain a certain level of literary poignancy.

MJ: Both of your books have narrators who are, for lack of a better word, naive.
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JSF: Yeah, they both have a sort of rawness. Their limitations define them. In the
case of Alex in Everything Is Illuminated, it’s a linguistic limitation. In the case of
Oskar, it’s limitation of experience. He hasn’t been in the world that much. In both
cases, they look at things differently, and they help us do the same, which is one of
the virtues of books. They can strip us of all the ways we’re jaded, or numb to
things. (JWS)

In a way, Jonathan Safran Foer’s statement admits that the novel’s characters show
personal deficiency, because the narrator can only offer a limited amount of
experience and of linguistic complexity. Yet, Jonathan Safran Foer emphasizes that
the ultimate goal of any narrator is to trigger the reader’s response to and interest
in a certain topic. The narrator alerts the reader’s awareness to the fact that each
topic offers several vantage points, from which we can examine or portray a
problem. Thus, the question whether a child displays psychological accuracy or
common childlike features or not, becomes irrelevant. What matters is the effect
the narrator creates and not the coherent truthfulness of the narrator, which the
writer has created.
Moreover, Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is
also a novel of self-‐interest like The Life Before Us, because the child narrator
comments on his personal daily experiences. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is
not just narrated by a child, but the text also includes an adult voice. The adult
voice builds the contrast to the child’s reality. The adult voice speaks of
possibilities that have been lost over the course of a life and the child’s narrative
illustrates the possibilities that a life offers at the start: ‘How did that boy making
love behind that shed become this man writing this letter at this table?’ (JSF 216).
The writer creates a fictional situation where all three generations; children,
parents and grandparents; have to deal with secrets of their own, on their own.
Oskar, though, the youngest member of the family, is the one, who ventures out
into the world and looks for answers to his questions. Oskar’s daily undertaking
focuses on the revelation of the question, why his father had hidden a key in a vase
before his death and which lock this key belongs to. On the one hand, Oskar’s trips
help him to escape home and the thoughts of his father.
Additionally, Oskar feels guilty, because he has hidden the family’s answer
machine on which the father left a message just before his death. Oskar uses his
actions to cover the father’s voice, yet all his actions are guided by the father’s
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voice. Even beyond death parents influence their children and the father speaks to
the reader through his child, who is the narrator of his own story, but also of the
father, the mother’s and the grandparents’ story: ‘”But if you don’t tell me
anything, how can I ever be right?” He circled something in an article and said,
“Another way of looking at it would be, how can you ever be wrong?”’ (JSF 9). If the
author includes a child narrator, the writer manages to put the child’s world into
perspective, by introducing an array of ancestors, whose habits and ideas explain
the child’s development. Oskar’s ancestors had special narratives of their own. The
father’s death allows Oskar to construct his own narrative, based on what the
father left him behind, in terms of memory. Thus, the child’s narrative becomes a
sort of multilevel biography, whose roots reach way back into the past, and whose
future can be expanded in the form of Oskar’s life. Hence, one narrative
encompasses a broader amount of narratives, than becomes visible at first sight.
Moreover, Oskar’s memory of his dad is, of course, meant to move the
reader and to attract the reader’s sympathy. The child who has lost his father
points out which consequences people’s self-‐righteous actions like acts of
terrorism have on a lot of other people; innocent people like Oscar: ‘I loved having
a dad who was smarter than the New York Times, and I loved how my cheek could
feel the hairs on his chest through his T-‐shirt, and how he always smelled like
shaving, even at the end of the day. Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn’t
have to invent a thing’ (JSF 12). If an adult had lost his partner, then the reader
would also feel compassion, by hearing the same words, but the effect would be
different. An adult woman mourning her husband, who was killed, falls under the
category of romance or tearjerker. Astonishing to note is, why an audience or the
reader reacts so differently to one and the same lines, but voiced by different
people. I suppose that adults expect other adults to keep their suffering internally
or at least, to voice their pain in a more matter of fact way. The lines Oskar
pronounces sound melodramatic. The reader finds it acceptable that a child
narrator expresses his grief in any way he can, while an adult is supposed to find
the right words without embarrassing other people. Of course, there are also
readers, who find any emotional expression too melodramatic, like Laura Miller,
who has argued earlier on that Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close inappropriately
trivializes the topic of 9/11, by viewing the events from a child’s point of view.
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Moreover, the scene Oskar describes depicts a very intimate moment

between him and his father. If the same scene would take place between two
adults, then the nature of the scene would have a sexual connotation. When Oskar
describes how safe he felt with his father, the reader perceives his childlike
innocence and natural need for protection. Consequently, the reader feels even
more compassionate towards Oskar, who was bereaved of the protection, he
craved and needed. Of course, adults also need honest affection and support, but in
our society the open display of weakness and the demand of others’ support is
perceived as a flaw. Nowadays, people need to have successful careers, working
relationships and remain good-‐looking in order to create the impression that they
lead a successful and happy life. Neediness is something that just children can
display in our modern world, without being frowned at.
Moreover, Laura Miller criticizes that

Oskar isn’t the only character prone to drifting out of focus and becoming a device
serving the author’s purposes rather than a fully imagined human being. How else
could Oskar’s grandmother, a nice, seventy something, bourgeois German woman,
in a letter to her grandson, describe the loss of her virginity in such poetic detail?
(LM)

Laura Miller criticises that Jonathan Safran Foer does not concentrate on the
creation of a coherent child character or characters, in general, who manage to
attract the reader’s unwavering attention throughout the novel, because they seem
‘like a plastic bags crammed with oddities.’ The critic argues that Jonathan Safran
Foer is more concerned with the transmission of the novel’s message, than with
the character’s authenticity and realism. However, we have already pointed out
earlier on that the character’s perceived coherence does not just depend on the
author’s talent, but also on the reader’s ability to interpret and understand the
child, according to the reader’s individual worldview.
Additionally, it is common that a writer focuses on the accurate
transmission of the message he wants to send the reader on the way with. The
author can never achieve the creation of a completely realistic child narrator,
because characters, like real people, are unpredictable and the author or reader
can never accurately estimate, if a real life person would act like the character does
or not, because everybody reacts differently, when confronted with a challenging
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situation. Thus, it is logical that an author concentrates more on the accurate

transmission of the text’s message, rather than on the characters’ realism, because
no matter how hard he tries, the writer can never be sure that the reader perceives
the novel’s characters as psychologically authentic.
In the end, though, the author must have been successful in the creation of a
convincing child narrator, when the reader has understood the author’s message.
The idea that Oskar has turned into Jonathan Safran Foer’s puppet and only serves
the author’s purposes cannot really be taken as criticism, because each character
in a novel serves a function, which is controlled by the writer. In real life, each
person also functions in relation to other people: an employee embodies the ideas
of his boss or if a person is self-‐employed, then he caters for the needs of his
clients. Additionally, also in a family each family member serves the purpose to
make the family work and thus, functions as the puppet of the whole micro-‐system
that a family is. In relation to the child narrator, we can say that Oskar is Jonathan
Safran Foer’s ‘brainchild’ and consequently, Oskar serves the purpose to make his
‘father’s’ world work as well. Vice-‐versa, if Jonathan Safran Foer manages to render
his novel a success, because of the importance of the text’s message, the child
narrator is also a success, no matter how realistic or unrealistic he appears to the
reader.
Like in The Life Before Us, Jonathan Safran Foer’s child narrator encourages
adults to precisely define, what they say, not necessarily, because they are more
probing than adults, but because children lack the linguistic understanding that is
necessary to take part in a conversation: ‘She said, “Believe it or not, I used to be
idealistic.” I asked her what “idealistic” meant’ (JSF 150). Child narrators do not just
naturally point out a perspective that contrasts adult perception, but children also
ask adults to reconsider the words they use, in order to convey or transmit their
conceived reality. Hence, an author, who uses a child narrator, who challenges the
exact meaning of the words people use, is automatically reminded to evaluate or
re-‐evaluate the words that he uses, in order to accurately transmit his message via
a written text.
Moreover, an adult narrator can point out the idea that people need to seize
the opportunity to live their lives, according to their own desires, wishes and
character: ‘I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live, Oskar. Because if I were
133

able to live my life again, I would do things differently. I would change my life’ (JSF
184). Child narrators though can visualize the idea that people of all ages face the
same problem of making the most of their days and it is even more tragic to
observe a child narrator, who falls short on fulfilling his life’s purpose and true
goal. On the other hand, it is most satisfying to observe that a child learns from his
elders, how to act according to his own true nature.
Finally, the child narrator manages to extend a conversation beyond the
moment, when the conversation is taking place, because the reader is allowed to
share in the child’s frame of mind, after the conversation and to get a glimpse of
what a child extricates from a conversation with an adult:

On Tuesday afternoon I had to go to Dr. Fein. I didn’t understand why I needed
help, because it seemed to me that you should wear heavy boots when your dad
dies, and if you aren’t wearing heavy boots, then you need help. But I went anyway,
because the raise in my allowance depended on it. (JSF 200)

Of course, it is true that an adult narrator can also grant the reader an insight into
his train of thoughts after the conversation has taken place, which can be equally
interesting for the reader. Yet, it is more interesting to read about a child’s
perspective, because the child’s view mostly goes unnoticed. Psychologists,
teachers, politicians and parents nowadays focus more on attributing a voice to
young people, but the child’s reality remains generally discussed from an adult’s
point of view. Adults decide what is best for children, without at least consulting
their kids: ‘Most of the kids in my class have ADD’ (JSF 142). Parents seem to
individually act responsibly by trying to find remedies for their children’s
behaviour, but children observe the extent of the measures that parents have
taken, because they are confronted with each other as a group. Children make
adults’ alleged rational behaviour seem irrational and relativize the adult’s action.
Of course, in order to highlight this fact, a novel can also be written from a teacher
or educator’s point of view, because he also views children’s developments within
a group context. Yet, children also form groups and act, even more freely in groups,
outside of school. So, it is logical that a child can portray a group reality more
accurately than an adult. Jonathan Safran Foer offers his child narrator the
possibility to discuss the outcome of adult-‐child interaction from a child’s
perspective. The scene between Dr. Fein and Oskar shows anew, like in Momo’s
134

case, that adults have an idea in mind, of what is psychologically best for a child,
and adults feel good about the alleged remedy that they have come up with. The
adult plan might be elaborate, but might fail to take into account the broader
picture.
Finally, on the one hand, we have argued that children and their innocent
and naïve voice can render a novel overtly romantic or even kitsch, which
diminishes a story’s intellectual seriousness. On the other hand, since we
stereotypically believe a child to behave shier and in a calmer way, a child, who
loses his temper can develop a more shocking emotional impact, which shakes the
reader and makes him want to react: ‘I keep smashing the skull against his skull,
which is also RON’s skull (for letting MOM get on with life) and MOM’s skull (for
getting on with life) and DAD’s skull (for dying) and GRANDMA’s skull (for
embarrassing me so much) and DR. FEIN’s skull (for asking if any good could come
out of dad’s death) and the skulls of everyone else I know’ (JSF 146). The actions of
the adult world shake the child’s world and render him almost mad. In contrast,
the child’s words are so shocking that they can make the reader shudder. Thus, in
the end, the child narrator represents the entity that stands in contrast to the adult
world. The two worlds influence and complement each other, in order to form a
complex network of necessary and challenging human interaction.

135

136

5. General Thinking: Conclusion

The present thesis was meant to discuss the question why an author would put a
child’s voice at the centre of his novel. Throughout the foregoing discussion, the
realization has emerged that the functions of the child narrators are similar to
those of adult narrators. Adult narrator and child narrator are both puppets that
are meant to transmit a novel’s message in the most accurate and in the most
appealing way for the reader. Child narrator and adult narrator, both raise social
and ethical questions and they can discuss any topic that the author wants to put at
the centre of his novel, because the author is always the source of the narrator’s
words and the author manages to find a way to render his story and characters
internally coherent.
Moreover, as we have pointed out earlier on, even if the author fails to bring
about internal coherence, the reader contributes to the story’s logic, because the
reader wants to personally understand the story, which only functions if the
reader patches up any textual inconsistency with his own logic.
Furthermore, adult narrator and child narrator can both adopt different
levels of maturity, because a child can copy adult behaviour or be more mature
than generally expected in relation to his age. The development of the child’s
character traits depends on character and on social circumstances and the author
can create any background situations for his characters that justify their
behaviour. Vice-‐versa an adult can adopt a child’s way of thinking by offering
flashbacks of his childhood or by displaying a youthful or childlike attitude.
Thus, it depends on the author’s preference, which figure he employs as the
narrator of his story. Either the author chooses a narrator, because he can identify
with that narrator and highlights that he is his own creation, or the author wants
to create a certain distance between himself and the narrator, because he wants to
voice social criticism. In that case, a child narrator suits the author’s purpose best.
This realization leads to the fact that although child narrator and adult narrator
fulfil the same function or adopt the same role in a novel, there are some
advantages for reader and author, when a novel is narrated from a child’s
perspective. These advantages have been extensively discussed in the foregoing
chapters. Yet, at this point, we can recall one or two most poignant features once
again:
137

First of all, we have discovered that a child narrator can render a novel
more emotionally charged and challenging for the reader, which makes the reader
feel more involved. In addition, the child’s negative emotional reaction or
development, throughout a novel, can render a novel’s message more emotionally
shocking or poignant, which livens up the reading process.
In contrast, we need to acknowledge that child narrators are not always
suitable for the transmission of a message, because a child’s voice also brings
about shortcomings. One drawback is for example that a child narrator can render
a novel soppier and circumcise the poignancy and cutting-‐edge seriousness of a
topic. A child’s voice can render a novel more emotionally tainted and have the
effect that a text which centres on a serious social matter can be perceived by the
reader as a tearjerker and as overtly fishing for the reader’s sympathy. However,
the way in which a reader perceives a character and a text’s message also depends
on the reader’s frame of mind and experience.
Now, in the end, we need to ask the questions whether there is such a
literary device as a stereotypical child narrator or if all child narrators are different
because of the authors’ individuality. On the one hand, there are indicators that
reveal that all child narrators are individuals, because in each novel, the child
narrator has a different name, for instance. Names generally stand for
individuality, because they distinguish people and characters. When a literary
figure does not have a name, this use usually means that the character is
interchangeable and that the nameless character is meant to represent the
common person. In the novels discussed in this paper, the characters have
individual names, like Oskar, Lawrence, Christopher, and Momo. In Momo’s case,
who is at times called Mohammed, the child’s name is even used in order to convey
different kinds of meaning. Thus, the fact that all child narrators have different
names indicates, on a first level, that all those literary figures have an independent
nature.
Moreover, a different author has created each individual character. Thus, a
different writer is the source of each narrator. So, also the product is each time
different. In the beginning we have asked the question whether a child narrator
mirrors the author’s social and cultural background or whether all child narrators
are identical. My research has shown that author and narrator are intrinsically
138

linked and that the author’s experiences influence or colour the nature of his
literary figure. Even if the author wants to detach himself from his character, the
distance the author strives and manages to achieve reflects the writer’s
background and culture, too.
In addition, the narrator does not just mirror the author’s social and
cultural background, but the importance and seriousness a reader attributes to the
child narrator also reflects the reader’s social, ethical, and cultural background and
experience and bears witness to the attitude towards children, which the people
surrounding the author display.
To sum up, on the one hand, each child narrator is unique in terms of his
origin, in terms of his individual character traits, in terms of the function he serves
and in terms of the different ways in which he can be understood by various
readers.
On the other hand, which are the features that all child narrators have in
common? First, in all the novels that we have discussed throughout the present
thesis, all the child narrators are male. On the one hand, this fact is a coincidence,
because there are novels featuring child narrators that have a girl’s voice, like To
Kill a Mockingbird (1960), by Harper Lee, which is narrated by Jean Louise ‘Scout’
Finch.
On the other hand, if we assume that the author identifies with his narrator
or that an author wants to keep a link between himself and his creation, then it is
understandable that the narrators in the novels we have discussed are male,
because their respective authors are male. If we have a second glance at Harper
Lee, we notice that a female author has chosen a female child narrator, which
would prove my theory that the author looks to maintain a link between himself
and his literary figure. On the one hand, the character has been removed from the
author, because the narrator is a child. On the other hand, narrator and author are
linked by the fact that they share the same sex.
Additionally, all the mentioned stories are not child-‐centred. They all focus
on broader social issues, like death, love, prostitution, and financial hardship. Like
Anne Schulock says:

Because for all their cuteness, the novels are really about surviving death and loss.
Several of the characters assemble literal survival kits, that include items like a
139

telescope, compasses, drafting paper, duct tape (…) But what good is a compass or
stuffed animal – where can you go, and what second-‐rate comfort will you find? –
when you are a child whose parents or sibling has died? (ASL)

That the topics are portrayed from a child’s perspective is more a literary device or
a function, as explained before, than a real concern for the child’s voice. Of course,
we can argue that Jonathan Safran Foer and Romain Gary especially picked a child
as the transmitter of their message, because they did not feel comfortable with the
combination of an adult voice and the political concerns discussed in their novels.
However, vice versa, we can say that their choice is one based on the wish to
exclude the adult voice, rather than on the desire to introduce a child’s narrative.
Moreover, the two novels tell us how adults think that children cope with
death, illness, and sex. It’s the adults’ interpretation of the children’s behaviour,
but the child’s real feelings are kept from us. Of course, the reader associates the
text’s message with a child and thus, the reader is made to think about a child’s
reality. This consequence is desirable and furthering for the child’s status in
society, even if the author’s intention was more focused on the novel’s message
than on the child.
Finally, all the novels featuring child narrators, which I have read, include
distinct child vocabulary, which renders the novels more authentic. However, the
novels are not consistently written in child language, but children’s expressions
are combined with adult talk. Pure child language would generally limit the
author’s possibilities of expressing his concern and of transmitting the text’s
intended message. Which consequence this approach has on the child has also
been discussed in the foregoing discussion.
Finally, both novels clearly draw attention to the fact that the narrator is a
child. In Extremely Loud, Oskar says: ‘I’m not allowed to watch TV at home’ (JSF 4).
This fact highlights that the author wants to attract the reader’s sympathy and
make him side with the narrator, in order to render him more open and alert for
the narrative’s message. Oskar says: ‘He asked, “How old are you?” I said seven,
because I wanted him to feel more sorry for me, so he would help me’ (JSF 90). Child
narrators manage to manipulate the other characters in the story and the reader.
In conclusion, in The Life Before Us, Momo phrases it quite right when he
says: ‘in my opinion you can’t judge everything by the same standards, like turtles
140

and hippopotamuses, for instance, because they are just not the same as other
people’ (RG 163). So, even if there are two child narrators who embody the same
character traits or who address similar problems, then one can still not say that all
child narrators are the same. Each novel and each novel’s message are different
and consequently, the characters who narrate these stories are also independent
individuals.
The entity, which creates a significant difference, between reading a novel
with a child narrator and reading a novel with an adult narrator, is the reader.
When the reader knows that the narrator is a nine-‐year-‐old child, because that has
been pointed out at the beginning of the story, then during the reading process the
reader creates images of a child in his head, who is experiencing what is described
on the page. The message that the author wants to transmit would just as clearly
have come across if there had been an adult narrator, but on an emotional level the
appeal would have been a completely different one. Reading about and imagining a
child having a hard time and meeting different kinds of people, raises in the reader
a natural instinct to protect the child. The reader is much more alert to the
emotional and physical distress of the child narrator than he would be to that of an
adult character, because adults have more power to sort themselves out. The
reader feels more involved and more personally challenged as an instance of
authority and support than as if the perspective of another adult had been
presented. According to Mary L. Northway that ‘”we see things not as they are, but
as we are” has become a psychological platitude,’46 but a text is as much an
author’s construct as it is a reader’s creation. It depends on the reader if a child
narrator turns into a laughing stock or if the reader feels more deeply involved,
because of the child character.
Finally, do I think that my aim of analyzing the child narrator has been
reached? On a first level, I believe that I have managed to narrow down and define
the majority of aspects in relation to child narrators. I have analyzed the different
perspectives from which a child narrator can talk and highlighted the advantages
and disadvantages that a child narrator can bring about.

46 Northway, Mary L. and Joyce Detweiler. “Children’s Perception of Friends and Non-‐Friends.”
Sociometry 18.4 (Nov. 1955): 271-‐275, 271.

141

In contrast, there is a part of the child narrator that remains undefined,

because in order to completely pinpoint an idea or concept, I would have needed to
analyze a broader variety of novels and include a wider range of cultural, ethical,
and political background. The concepts of ‘real author’ and ‘implied author’ could
also have been explained in relation to the topic at hand. However, I needed to
make a choice in terms of the books that I wanted to include in the present analysis
and I needed to limit, which concepts I wanted to define, in order to restrict my
research paper and to render my thesis conclusive.
However, even if I would have done still more expansive research that
approach would not have guaranteed that the concept of the child narrator could
have been defined any better by me, because the idea of the ‘child narrator’ will
always remain partly vague, because each author interprets his narrator and his
conception of ‘child’ differently. Additionally, also the reader understands the
child’s development and the narrator’s function in different ways, which renders
the explicit definition of the two entities an insurmountable challenge.
Finally, I would like to end my research paper with a quote by Anne
Schulock, because it summarizes the appeal that accounts for the attraction a child
narrator exerts on its readers:

In an age of shortening attention spans and glorification of stupidity, I find it
comforting and exciting to spend time with young characters for whom books,
maps, notebooks, letters, research, drawings, imagined inventions and classic films
are central and essential. Precocious narrators, and the ambitious novelists who
create them, give proof of the power of intelligence, imagination, curiosity, and
even “gee-‐whiz wonderment.” (ASL)

In the end, child narrators yield beneficial aspects and supply a text with a fresh
outlook for the most poignant transmission of the author’s message. However, we
also need to conclude that employing a child narrator is at times just an artistic
preference or author’s tool that could be replaced by an adult narrator without
circumcising the novel’s message. Finally, discussing the concept of ‘child narrator’
is only possible, if we treat the fictive narrator in a story like a real person, because
the documentation and refutation of the initial thesis question only worked,
because I have discussed the child narrator based on real life situations.


142

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Extremely Young  Incredibly Wise:

List of Figures

Table of Contents

 1. Positive and Emotional Thinking: Introduction .........................................9

1. Positive and Emotional Thinking: Introduction8

In literature, since writing generally reflects the circumstances of its time,

1.2. Research Methodology

different perspectives (factual, emotional, critical, general, positive, creative).

2. Factual Thinking: Key Definitions

2.1. Narrator and Reader

Further references are included in the text (MHA).

1946): 288-­‐292, 290.

references are included in the text (RG).

2.2. The Child

282 – Further references are included in the text (DDB).

35.1 (Spring-­‐Summer 2005): 42-­‐57, 45.

Further references are included in the text (AMC).

This common practice indicates that people have stereotypical ideas in

are included in the text (TS).

2.3. The Child Narrator

Additionally, in the case where an author feels negatively about his

history. Speech in real life is marked by hesitations, repetitions, anacolutha and

2.4. Adult Literature

from person to person. Additionally, it depends on the novel’s potential for

3. Critical Thinking: The Child Narrator’s Effect

According to Elinor Ochs,

included in the text (MK).

choice and not typing mistakes (sic).

the Enlightenment.” Eighteenth-­Century Studies 31.4 (Summer 1998): 377-­‐401, 378.

circumstances and that a child narrator cannot really be labelled unrealistic,

Further references are included in the text (JSF).

probing process creates a degree of suspense, which is furthering for a story’s

http://nymag.com/print/?/nymetro/arts/books/reviews/11574 -­‐ Further references are included

4. Creative Thinking: Uniqueness and Function of Child

4.1. The Life Before Us, by Romain Gary

more adult talk, than children in sheltered circumstances: ‘I stopped being

characterizes Huckleberry Finn’s situation, sounds as if he were talking about

observer of and commentator on class differences is more poignant, because the

to form stable and mature relationships independently of age and social

Additionally, there is Momo’s relation to an umbrella he calls Arthur: ‘I

http://motherjones.com/media/2005/05/jonathan-­‐safran-­‐foer -­‐ Further references are included

Relief Efforts.” Social Problems 55.2 (May 2008): 190-­‐215, 196.

Moreover, the scene Oskar describes depicts a very intimate moment

situation. Thus, it is logical that an author concentrates more on the accurate

5. General Thinking: Conclusion

Sociometry 18.4 (Nov. 1955): 271-­‐275, 271.

In contrast, there is a part of the child narrator that remains undefined,

Included Visual Material

Century Fiction 27.4 (Mar. 1973): 449-­‐468.

Consulted Online Sources

Potrebbero piacerti anche

1946): 288-‐292, 290.

35.1 (Spring-‐Summer 2005): 42-‐57, 45.

the Enlightenment.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 31.4 (Summer 1998): 377-‐401, 378.

http://nymag.com/print/?/nymetro/arts/books/reviews/11574 -‐ Further references are included

http://motherjones.com/media/2005/05/jonathan-‐safran-‐foer -‐ Further references are included

Relief Efforts.” Social Problems 55.2 (May 2008): 190-‐215, 196.

Sociometry 18.4 (Nov. 1955): 271-‐275, 271.

Century Fiction 27.4 (Mar. 1973): 449-‐468.