Second-person narrative

The second-person narrative is a narrative mode in which the protagonist or another main character is referred to by second-person personal pronouns and other kinds of addressing forms, for example the English second-person pronoun "you".

Example:

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. —Opening lines of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

The use of "you" as an addressee (as in poetry and song) is employed in the "Choose Your Own Adventure"[1] and "Fighting Fantasy" series of books that were popular in the 1980s. It is also usual in interactive fiction, where the reader controls at least some of the protagonist's actions.

The second person (you) is often used to address the reader personally and is therefore frequently used in persuasive writing and advertising.[2] It is, in many languages, a very common technique of several popular and non- or quasi-fictional written genres such as guide books, self-help books, choose-your-own-adventure books, do-it-yourself manuals, role-playing games, and gamebooks, musical lyrics, and also blogs.

See also

Narrator

References

  1. ↑ Hamid, Mohsin. "Mohsin Hamid on his enduring love for the second-person narrative", The Guardian, March 22, 2013
  2. ↑ "First, Second and Third Person", New South Wales Department of Education and Training

Further reading



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