Chris Tusa

For those of you who are interested, Storyglossia has a wonderful article on ghost narrators. I’ve cut and pasted it below:

In Stacey Richter’s story “Rules for Being Human”—from her collection My Date with Satan—it is ghosts who convey the message. This is a fascinating technique, and the use of ghosts—as well as dead narrator’s (witness Alice Sebold’s hugely successful The Lovely Bones)—is a growing trend within literary fiction. The topic is ripe for critical analysis. For instance, what does this frequent use of ghostly narrators who envy the living reveal about the psyche of western culture? And what are the implications of omniscient third-person narrators being replaced by omniscient first-person ghost narrators?

The “Rules for Being Human” features one of these first-person ghost narrators. Although this narrator isn’t omniscient—it doesn’t make statements about the interior consciousness of other characters, whether it be human of ghost—it does roam freely about the scene commenting on everything it sees. One advantage of this narrative strategy is that it provides the intimacy of the first-person voice while also providing the more encompassing knowledge of an omniscient narrator. And it’s the ghost narrator that makes this strategy work. Unlike a human first-person narrator, the ghost is not encumbered by having to interact with the other characters and thus is free to function solely as an observer.

The other advantage a ghost narrator has is that it is free to envy. Think of it this way: How do you react to a person who engages in a running commentary where their envy of others is the primary theme? The same goes for a first-person narrator. The ghost narrator, however, taps into our sense that the dead would prefer to be living and that those who waste their lives are to be held in disdain. We give these ghost narrators more latitude to comment than we would a human narrator. Richter’s narrator—now a severed and disembodied leg, but in life “a sauced and angry son of a bitch”—exhibits these envious concerns, “The living get everything I want,” as well as the disdain for those who waste their life, “I’m always cheered to find I’m not the only one without a life.” Perhaps because the narrator is dead we are more forgiving of the mean-spirited commentary, and thus more accepting of the other authorial judgments in the story. After all, sometimes being dead gives one the voice of authority.