Creating disconcerting uncertainty through sustained second person narrative voice: Second person narrative voice in the fiction of G.M. Glaskin and Peter Kocan

Abstract

Sustained second person narrative voice is rarely used because it apparently asks too much of a reader. It also challenges a writer because of the difficulty it offers with point of view. Most commonly, second person is used to change point of view, expand on character or alter narrative flow or perspective, often through dialogue, where it can be either or both interrogatory and expository. When used in this manner, second person does not necessarily change the overall narrative voice, which is likely to be primarily first or third person. It is almost universally agreed that in fiction sustained second-person narration is hard to manage, and that second-person narrative voice is very rarely used in sustained form because of the difficulties in maintaining it. Whether or not this is true, certainly the employment of sustained second-person narrative form in literary fiction in English has not been as prevalent as the corresponding first-person and third-person forms. One difficulty is the immediately obvious effect of using second person, which is that it directly addresses the reader, making the reader complicit with the narrative voice. This creates a disconcerting uncertainty; is 'You' 'Me'? But this can be used to very good effect, setting up a collaboration of reader and writer where "you" becomes "me". This paper explores the use of sustained second person narrative in G. M. Glaskin's (Neville Jackson's) 'No end to the way' and Peter Kocan's 'The Treatment'.