There’s a moment early in Boule de Suif where the narrator describes remnants of a defeated army passing through Rouen — “not disciplined units but bands of stragglers,” beards unkempt, uniforms in rags, “marching only out of force of habit and dropping with fatigue as soon as they stopped.” Notice what’s missing from that sentence: the word “defeated” never appears. The third-person narrator doesn’t need it. He shows you exhausted, dropping men, and your own mind supplies the word for him.
Now imagine a first-person narrator telling you that. It would have a completely different effect. Let me show you want I mean.
Here is the first paragraph of A Farewell to Arms, a first-person narrated story:
IN THE LATE SUMMER of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves….
If you remove the word “we” from that group of words, you wouldn’t know it was first person. That one pronoun makes everything personal, puts you INSIDE the story. Do you see the difference?
Now Boule de Suif:
FOR several days in succession remnants of a routed army had been passing through the town. They were not disciplined units but bands of stragglers. The men’s beards were unkempt and dirty, their uniforms in rags, and they slouched along without colours or regiments. All of them seemed crushed and exhausted, incapable of thought or resolution, marching only out of force of habit and dropping with fatigue as soon as they stopped.
If you add the words “I saw” into the first sentence, you have a first person narrator. And it would have to be a completely different story(i.e., the narrator would have to be one of the passengers on the coach to have a story).
There is no right or wrong choice in narrators; the point to remember is the difference between telling and showing which both narrators use as technique.
The thing to keep in mind is that reliability of these narrators is always the key to appreciation and understanding. And that third-person narrators always have to be reliable or the story won’t make any sense.
When the narrator in this story wants you to feel the town’s panic under occupation, he doesn’t write “the people were afraid.” He compares it to “natural cataclysms, those devastating upheavals of the earth against which wisdom and strength alike are of no avail.” When he wants you to feel the other passengers’ hunger and jealousy as they watch Elisabeth eat, he writes that “the ladies’ contempt for the hussy grew into a ferocious longing to kill her or throw her out into the snow with her drinking-cup, her basket, and all her provisions.” He never says jealousy. He never says envy. He just shows you people who would rather see a woman thrown into the snow than admit they want what she has.
This is showing versus telling, and worth understanding to appreciate classical literature. Jimmy rarely talks about the writers of classical literature, but let me make this observation and exception: the writer has thought deeply about which narrator to use to get his points across.
For example, when the married women decide it’s their “duty” to confront Boule de Suif, the narrator adds a line that isn’t dialogue and isn’t action — it’s commentary: “legalized love always looks down on its free colleague.” That’s the third-person narrator stepping outside the story entirely to make a point about hypocrisy. And it’s simple to spot: you just have to ask yourself, “who is saying that?” Perhaps more important, why?
Compare that to a narrator who simply stays inside the story he’s telling, reporting events without judgment. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales which is on this website and YouTube channel contains great examples of narrators. You have a traveler narrator what other travelers narrate in stories on their way to Canterbury. When that character narrates his or her story, you have this: first-person traveler narrator telling us what the knight traveler says, who tells us his story which contains characters who speak and do things.
Complex narration. Kinda like life, huh?
In Boule de Suif, the narrator jumped out and editorialized with that line— and because you’ve already agreed to trust him, that editorial has to be the truth rather than an opinion. But if someone inside that story said it, well, you see how it changes?
On paper, the Prussian officer holds every advantage — he can keep ten people prisoner in Totes for as long as he likes. But the narrator shows you, without ever stating it outright, that the officer wants Elisabeth willingly to give herself to him, not him forcing. That single unstated preference hands Elisabeth the real power in the situation — which is exactly why her traveling companions spend days pressuring her instead of him. The person forcing the issue is never named in so many words. You have to watch the story show it to you.
Once you see how much this narrator accomplishes by refusing to simply tell you what people feel, you start reading everything differently — including yourself. Keeping showing and telling in mind changes how you read everything – including the people you meet in real life. Why not read Boule de Suif with Jimmy, and pay attention to everything the narrator never quite says.