How the Character of the Narrator Constructs a Narratee and an Implied Reader in Philip Pullman’s <i>Northern Lights</i>

Abstract

The third-person omniscient narrator of fiction texts for children holds the ability to access characters’ thoughts, fly where they will within the story, and interact with time and tense. Philip Pullman characterises this kind of narrator as a multiscient sprite, not a human seeing and telling, but something else which possesses unhuman-like qualities. This paper uses an analysis of the narrator’s voice, character, and choices to access two other characters created by the story being told—the narratee and the implied reader, both of whom may well be thought of as child characters produced by the text. A profile of these two products is then presented. Through a close textual analysis, which draws out untagged parts of Northern Light’s narrator’s speech, an examination of the kinds of characters the narratee, and implied reader could be seen to be is gathered. The narrator’s ability to intensely empathise with characters is passed onto the narratee and also normalised by aspects of the story, including the alethiometer, a device from the created world of the story which is imbued with strikingly similar qualities to the narrator. Lyra, the book’s protagonist, and the instrument interact with each other in a manner akin to the narrator and narratee, both having an agency which the implied reader could be bestowed with from reading the text.

Keywords

• narrator
• child narratee
• implied child reader
• <i>His Dark Materials</i>
• <i>Northern Lights</i>
• alethiometer