The Eye that Sees and the Voice that Speaks:
Narratology and the Mysteries of Edgar Allan Poe
By Roger Hobbs
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Chapter One
Chains of Focalization in Edgar Allan Poe
Oppositional Models?
Focalization, Gerald Prince writes, is “the perspective in terms of which the narrated
situations and events are presented; the perceptual or conceptual position in terms of
which they are rendered” (Prince, Dictionary, 31). But within this apparently rather
simple idea, dozens of varieties of theories about the inner function of narrative
perspective have cropped up.
Gerard Genette's theory of focalization involves three supertypes and a myriad of
subtypes which he used to classify perspective within arbitrary units of text (Narrative
Discourse). Mieke Bal's theory involves adding chains of focalization to fabula-sujet
theory (“Focalization”). William Nelles develops concepts of focalization that involve
each of the five senses (Frameworks). Manfred Jahn emphasizes different kinds of
perception based whether they were a priori or a posteriori the actual physical senses
(“Windows of Focalization”). Rimmon-Kenan expands the term to include various
mental functions, including ideology and emotion (Narrative Fiction). Chatman even
tries to radicalize the distinction between the narrator and the focalizer (“Characters and
Narrators”). But all of these concepts have one objective: to trace the lines of perspective
through a story in an effort to understand how they work.
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The main battlefield is over the misty and ill-defined role focalization plays next to
narration. Theorists tend to fall into one of two camps: those who base their theories on
Gerard Genette and those who base their theories on Mieke Bal. In the following few
segments, I will lay forth arguments from each side, and present their merits and
shortcomings. I will start with Genette and Bal themselves, and then discuss the various
theories and critiques that have been employed by each side.
The camps are alike in many ways. Both draw the same distinction between internal and
external focalization. Both admit fixed, variable, and multiple focalizations. Both are
interested in what characters see versus what narrators tell. Both have answers for the
problems of free direct discourse, subjective analepsis, and nondiegetic acts of
perception. Both allow for multiple kinds of homo- and heterodiegetic focalization. All
in all, both camps discuss the same problems.
The theories differ along theoretical grounds. For Genette, focalization is a refinement of
terminology. For Bal, it is a fundamental operation between fabula and sujet. Genette's
followers prefer a tighter definition of focalization, and Bal's followers prefer a looser
one.
Manfred Jahn even goes as far as to claim that “every narratologist has to decide for
himself or herself […] whether to stick to Genette's or Bal's model” (Jahn, Focalization,
102). I disagree with the assumption that Bal and Genette's models are so fundamentally
different that everyone must pick a side. They are based on each other, after all, and both
theories have reconcilable differences. After I have summarized the battle between these
two camps, I intend to take useful elements from each theory and apply them to the
focalization of Edgar Allan Poe's story, “The Purloined Letter.” This is not an attempt to
create some sort of grand theory of focalization, certainly. I am merely taking from these
theories á la carte according to what, in my estimation, are valid, legitimate, and
reasonable advancements in the application of the concept. This is not only an attempt to
create a new analytical model, either. The theories still have individual validity; I have
merely done what I have to in order to make the fullest possible use of the idea available.
I am studying the general notion of focalization, after all, not one side or the other.
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As Poe wrote in his introduction to “The Murders of the Rue Morgue,” “as the strong
man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into
action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles” (Poe, “Murders,”
141, emphasis in original). In order to find where Poe's chains of focalization start, I too
will first have to disentangle them. This is where the analyst really shines-- in the
challenge a text or theory presents to its understanding and, ultimately, its use. In the
following chapter, I will start with a history, move into a critique, and end with an
application.
Genette's System
Arguably, focalization first came to the forefront of narratology because of a section in
Gerrard Genette's 1983 book-length essay Narrative Discourse. In his chapter on mood,
Genette makes a simple and important distinction that kick-starts the idea. He notes,
when reviewing previous literature on the subject, that most works regarding the issue of
narrative perspective
suffer from regrettable confusion between what I call mood
and voice, a confusion between the question who is the
character whose point of view orients the narrative
perspective and the very different question who is the
narrator – or, more simply, the question who sees? And the
question who speaks? (Genette, Narrative Discourse, 186,
emphasis in original)
Here, Genette points out what he perceives as a lack of technical terminology which can
make the distinction between perspective and narration. Theorists must make, to
summarize his argument, some distinction between the act of choosing the words in a
narrative (narration) and the act of experiencing or owning the perspectives those words
portray (focalization). There must be some filter by which the infinite amount of
information that a narrative could portray is pared down to what a narrative can portray
and eventually down to what it does portray. In order to do this, Genette sets forward a
simple typology of perspective filters, and, avoiding “the too specifically visual
connotations of the terms” (189), chose the words focalization and narration to describe
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it.
Genette's typology presented three main categories with several subcategories each.
They were: (1) nonfocalization, (2) internal focalization, or (3) external focalization. The
first category applied to narratives whose narrator or authorial voice was “so indefinite,
or so remote, [or] with such a panoramic field […] that [the narrator] cannot coincide
with any character” (Revisited, 73). The second one applied to a narrative whose
“restriction of field” (Discourse, 189) came from within the narrative diegesis: for
example, the thoughts, feelings and perceptions of a first person character-narrator, such
as the little girl from Genette's favorite example, What Maisie Knew. The third covered
narratives whose viewpoint came from outside the diegesis, but without unlimited scope.
These were the type of novels “popularized between the two world wars by Dashiell
Hammett's novels, in which the hero performs in front of us without our ever being
allowed to know his thoughts or feelings” (190). The most common example of this kind
of focalization is Hemmingway's short story “The Killers.” The reader looks at the
characters from the outside, but with a limit.
Of course, by “who sees?” and “who speaks?” Genette did not solely refer to the
difference between talking and seeing. He referred to the much broader difference
between narrating and perceiving, which, later narratologists took to mean all of the
senses and faculties, not merely sight. Various theorists have since expanded the
definition, from including the other four human senses (William Nelles) to exploring
how narrative perspective works in hypothetical language (David Herman), and even
how focalization works through “cognitive, emotive, and ideological orientation”
(Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction, 71). Genette's typology did what other perspective
typologies could not; it provided language for discussing perspective without being
caught in the jargon of narration. This one simple innovation launched focalization in the
direction of becoming, in the words of Manfred Jahn, “an independent module of the
narratological system” (Jahn, “Focalization,” 97).
Bal's System
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The biggest reformer and critic of Genette's typological system, and by far the most
rebuked in turn, came two years later, in the person of Dutch theorist Mieke Bal. In her
1985 essay “The Laughing Mice,” Bal attempted to expand Genette's concept in three
important and highly controversial ways.
First, Bal reduced what was, in Genette's Narrative Discourse, a three-part system for
describing focalization (internal, external and zero) into a two-part system containing the
possibility of only internal and external focalization. The purpose of this change was
theoretical rather than practical: since “perception […] is a psychosomatic process, [it is]
strongly dependent on the position of the perceiving body” (142). Or, since the writer
must put his narratorial “camera” somewhere, even if he is omniscient, he will always
somehow limit the information he shares with the reader according to the choices he
makes of the things to show. Zero-focalization is not a useful distinction to make
because its difference from external focalization is an arbitrary degree of distance.
According to Bal, there is always some viewpoint expressed in any narrative.
Second, Bal tried to re-frame focalization as a narrative operation that was fundamental
to her construction of the fabula and sujet. For Genette, focalization was nothing more
than “a selection of narrative information with respect to what was traditionally called
omniscience,” or, in the case of fiction, “completeness of information” (Genette,
Revisited, 74, emphasis in original). It had little to do with narrative operations. Bal
turned it into something much bigger. She incorporated it as an essential part of her
narrative theory. Focalization became the essential step between a fabula and a sujet. The
logic was sound. As Bal argued, “whenever events are presented, they are always
presented from within a certain vision” (Bal, Narratology, 142, emphasis added). If this
was so, every unit of text should, it follows, be focalized somehow and to some extent. If
this is so, then focalization is suddenly on equal ground with narration. Both are
narrative operations: they transform the fabula first into the sujet (through focalization)
and then into the narrative instance (through narration). This is a much bigger and much
more formal view of focalization than anyone had tried before.
Third, Bal added the idea of “chains of perception,” or, what Genette rather witheringly
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called it in his critique, “focalization in the second degree” (Genette, Revisited, 76,
emphasis in original). A chain of perception is an instance where a focalizer focalizes
someone who is in turn focalizing someone else. In short, a character who sees that
someone sees. This idea stemmed from the maxim that “every narrative statement
includes a focalizer (character) and a focalized (character)” (Genette, Revisited, 72). If a
nondiegetic narrator is talking about a man taking a walk, for example, the narrator is the
focalizer who is focalizing the man taking the walk. But if one were to add another layer
to it, say, a nondiegetic narrator is talking about a man taking a walk who is watching a
woman take a walk, dejected and alone, then the narrator is focalizing the man, who is
focalizing the woman, who is taking a walk. Hence there is focalization of the second
degree and a 'chain' of perceptive acts. This is an important distinction to make if the
reader wants to determine whose point of view “dejected and alone” comes from. Who
thinks that? Who sees that? Bal's most famous example of this theory comes from an
Indian bas-relief:
At the upper left, the wise man Arjuna is depicted in a yoga
position. At the bottom right stands a cat. Around the cat are
a number of mice. The mice are laughing […]. It is a strange
image. Unless the spectator interprets the signs. The
interpretation runs as follows. Arjuna is in a yoga position
and is meditating to win Lord Siva's favor. The cat,
impressed by the beauty of absolute calm, imitates Arjuna.
Now the mice realized they are safe. They laugh. […]
Following the chain of events in reverse, we also arrive at
the next one by perceptual identification. (Bal, Narratology,
144)
At the first layer of focalization, the tourist looks at the bas-relief. At the second layer,
the tourist sees that the cat sees the wise man. On the third layer, the tourist sees that the
mice see the cat seeing the wise man. In order to construct a fabula of these separate
events, Bal argues, the reader must “follow the chain of events in reverse” (mice, cat,
wise man) and recognize the perceptive switches involved in in this reconstruction.
Problems with Bal
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There was no bigger critic of Bal's first change than Genette himself. In Narrative
Discourse Revisited, Genette admits that in external focalization, the focus of a narrative
is situated “at a point in the diegetic universe chosen by the narrator, outside every
character” (Genette, Revisited, 75). However, he argues that in zero focalization the
focus of the narrative is from a point in the diegesis so remote or so variable that
specifying that location does not yield any helpful information. Genette does not deny
Bal's claim that the only difference between external and zero focalization is a matter of
narrative distance, but he claims that to reduce focalization to just two types (internal
and external) is to collapse a helpful distinction. Some text just is focalized so distantly
that there is nothing to be gained from locating its external focalizer. For example,
consider Poe's introduction to his study of interior decoration, “The Philosophy of
Furniture:”
The Italians have but little sentiment beyond marbles and
colors. In France, meliora probant, deteriora sequunetur –
the people are too much a race of gadabouts to maintain
those household proprieties of which, indeed, they have a
delicate appreciation, or at least the elements of a proper
sense. The Chinese and most of the eastern races have a
warm but inappropriate fancy. The Scotch are poor
decorists. The Dutch have, perhaps, an indeterminate idea
that a curtain is not a cabbage. In Spain, they are all curtains
– a nation of hangmen. The Russians do not furnish. The
Hottentots and Kickapoos are very well in their way. The
Yankees alone are preposterous. (Poe, “Furniture,” 364)
There is nothing to be gained from calling this passage “externally focalized” because the
viewpoint from which the narrator speaks is so very distant that it is indeed impossible to
locate. Where is this focalizer who is capable of viewing Italian, Chinese, Russian,
Dutch, Spanish and American living quarters all at the same time? He does not exist.
And as to the claim that the author must always focalize his text to some degree, Genette
argues this is exactly what separates verbal communication from visual: “unlike the
director of a movie, the novelist is not compelled to put his camera somewhere; he has
no camera” (Genette, Revisited, 73) Although Genette admits that the distinction
requires a certain amount of “nonchalance” towards external versus zero focalization,
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the latter category is still useful. “The two types of focalization cannot be confused,
unless the author has constructed (focalized) his narrative in a manner that is not only
incoherent, but chaotic” (75).
Bal's second change was eventually dismantled by W. Bronzwaer in a short critical note.
Bronzwaer focused on Bal's claim that “the relation between the sign [...] and its contents
(the fabula) can only be established by mediation of an interjacent layer, the 'view' of the
events” (Bal 144-146). Bronzwaer used the following diagram to describe Bal's model:
Narrative Text [Instance]
Narration
Story [Sujet]
Focalization
Fable [Fabula]
(Bronzwaer 193)
By doing so, he implicitly compared it to the traditional model that has been used by
formalists and modal narratologists for years:
Story (Sujet)
Narration
Fable (Fabula)
Whereas the traditional model only had two layers, the fabula and the sujet, which were
related by the function of narration, Bal's system has three layers related by two
functions. In the traditional model, a story begins as a series of events that occur within a
diegetic world, usually obeying some rule of chronology or causality, but not
necessarily. Then, when narrated, the order or experience of these events change. The
narrator adds prolepsis, analepsis, fantasy, perspective, motive, emotion, et cetera, et
cetera. Bal's changes fundamentally alter this paradigm. The story still begins as a
fabula. It is then subject to focalization: the author picks the narrative “views” which are
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to be expressed. This is where proplepsis and analepsis come in. It then becomes a sujet,
which is the same as before, except now the sujet needs to be further transformed
because it doesn't yet consist of words-- only views. The sujet has to be turned into a
narrative instance through narration, which is now when the author picks the particular
words that make the story. The narrative instance is the actual physical object, such as a
book. The sujet is the way the book is told. The fabula is its contents. The idea is that
there can be many detective stories, but only so many from the perspective of C. Auguste
Dupin, and only one story beginning with “At Paris, just after dark...” (Poe, “The
Purloined Letter,” 281). For Bal, focalization “is assigned its precise role in her
narratology: it denotes the transformations which the fable undergoes in order to become
a story” (Bronzwaer 194). This, as Bronzwaer notes, is preposterous. This system “lends
the concept of focalization a communicative meaning” (194) which the notion of
focalization cannot tolerate. Essentially, Bal gives the focalizer the ability to make actual
narrative choices that interfere and overlap with the ability of the narrator to narrate.
Continuing from a previous example, to whom do the words “dejected and alone”
belong? If a narratologist were to go along with Bal's theory, these words would belong
to the second focalizer, which, in this example, is the second man taking a walk. But
wait, that can't be right-- that man is not the narrator. He is not allowed, in this model, to
make actual communicative choices. They can't be his words, because he doesn't have
the power to choose words. That choice doesn't occur until one step down the chain,
when the narrator turns the sujet into the narrative text. So the narratologist is left with a
hard situation. Either the focalizers makes all narrative and linguistic choices and the
narrators merely take dictation, or the focalizers make no linguistic choices and are
subject entirely to the opinions of the narrators. Bronzwaer explores both possibilities,
but comes to the conclusion that Bal's model is both inadequate and unnecessary for
explaining focalization because it divides communicative power in a way that it cannot
be divided.
Finally, Genette also took issue with Bal's idea of focalization of the second degree. In
his estimation, a text was the thing focalized or not. The character or object actually
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doing the focalizing (the focalizer) wasn't structurally important. If, for example, a
mystery story with an otherwise externally focalizing narrator were to dip briefly into
one of his character's thoughts through the use of italics, the narratologist would be
presented with two linguistic units. Take, for example, a segment of Stieg Larsson's
novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo:
Kalle Blomkvist – she remembered his nickname and
suppressed the urge to say it out loud – suddenly looked
serious. (Larsson, The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, 332)
For Genette, there are two possible readings of this. The sentence, if taken as a whole, is
externally focalized. That external focalizer closely follows the movements of one of the
character's faces. The narrator is close by in the diegesis, and, but not quite any one
particular person. However, if taken in parts, the sentence is almost entirely internally
focalized. Kale Bolmkvist is free direct discourse. Lisbeth Salander thinks those words.
Between the full stops, the narrator dives into her thoughts. She “remembered” the
nickname Kalle. Finally, although the reader doesn't actually see through her eyes, we
understand her opinion. Bolmkvist looks serious. Bal's attempts to fold instances of
focalization into other instances seemed silly to Genette. In order to maintain its
plasticity as a theory, Genette reasoned, focalization must be limited to particular units of
text and the application of the term must not “become a catechism with a yes-or-no
answer to check off for each question, when often the proper answer would be that it
depends on the day, the context, and the way the wind is blowing” (Revisited, 74).
Problems with Genette
Despite Genette's argument to the contrary, though, there is something to be gained from
following Bal's chains of focalization in the “second degree.” For example, how is one
supposed to explain a text which has a sujet which is only different from the fabula
because of a series of related focalizations? In Bal's example involving the wise man, the
cat and the mice, focalizing different units of text is not useful enough: the image is a
bas-relief, after all. It cannot be divided into narrative parts. In this case, the only way to
understand the focalization within the story, or, as it may be in this case, the very story
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itself, is to use Bal's arithmetic method:
EF-[CF (mice)]- [CF (cat)]-[CF (wise man)]-np
In this method, there are two basic units. EF, short for external focalization, and CF,
short for character focalization. So an external focalizer, say, the narrator, who focalizes
a character (a woman) who is in turn focalizing another character (a man) would look
like:
EF- [np CF (“woman”)]-[ np CF (“man”)]
In addition, Bal drew a distinction between character focalization that is either
perceptible or non-perceptible (p or np). This distinction allows the narratologist to make
the distinction between perceptible focalzing acts (a man looking at a woman) and acts
that aren't acts of perception but focalizations of the mind (a man dreaming,
hallucinating, fantasizing, or solving a puzzle). So in the wise man example, all acts of
focalization are labeled p. The tourist who understands the story sees the mice, the mice
see the cat, the cat sees the wise man. If a narratologist were to stick wholly to Genette's
system and ignore chains of focalization entirely, he or she would certainly be able to
locate acts of focalization and narration in this text, but they wouldn't be helpful. The
story that fundamentally relates the three images in the bas relief would remain
unintelligible.
Also, perhaps Genette was too orthodox in his defense of zero-focalization, too.
Although it seems clear that zero-focalization is a useful distinction from exterior
focalization, there is little to be gained from a narratological model that requires its
adherents to play fast and loose with the rules and approach the text with Genette's now
infamous “nonchalance” (Revisited, 75). Genette's criticism still stands: a three-typed
model is still better than a two-typed model. This in part why William Nelles suggested
that the phrase “zero-focalization” be replaced instead by “free focalization,” as in the
phrase “free direct discourse,” because its not that a zero-focalized passage has no degree
of focalization, but rather that the passage's focalizer is never in one place long enough to
be locatable. The narrator moves the focalizer “freely” and in an unlimited and
sometimes unstructured manner. Considering the passage from Poe's essay on furniture
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again:
[…] The Chinese and most of the eastern races have a warm
but inappropriate fancy. The Scotch are poor decorists. The
Dutch have, perhaps, an indeterminate idea that a curtain is
not a cabbage. In Spain, they are all curtains – a nation of
hangmen. The Russians do not furnish [....] (Poe,
“Furniture,” 364)
If we go with Genette only, there is no focalizer, and the narrator isn't really giving us a
“view” of anything, he is merely doing his job-- narrating. But Genette's concept of
“zero-focalization” doesn't quite fit this passage. Clearly someone experiences the “warm
but inappropriate fancy” Poe ascribes to the Chinese. To invoke one of Genette's biggest
defenders, “The narrator can – and indeed must – 'focalize' if no character does”
(Chatman, “Characters,” 203). Focalization is not really optional: if we want the utility of
the term as applied not only to seeing and hearing but feeling and thinking, we must
admit that nothing can be expressed without some sort of view. “Free focalization” is a
much more accurate term. Poe has written a freewheeling and panoramic passage that
fits neither external focalization nor internal. His focalization is present, but free. So, to
touch back on Bal's algebraic notation for a moment, a narratologist might describe Poe's
text as:
FF (narrator)-np
Because he is freely focalizing (FF) in his narrator's voice, when a character is not in fact
present, nor any other focalizer, in the diegesis.
Problems with Both Bal and Genette
Even though free focalization can easily be added to Bal's chains of focalization, Bal's -p
and -np distinction might not fit as well. Poe's stories are crafted from complex webs of
focalization and narration, and not all of that focalization comes in the easily packaged
forms of sensual focalization. Poe's narrator doesn't perceive, with his eyes or any of his
other senses, any of that furniture. In this case, we should substitute Bal's theory of -p
and -np with Manfred Jahn's rather similar concept of online and offline perception.
Whereas Bal's -p and -np primarily dealt with the difference between perception of
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things that a person within the diegesis would argue as “real” and things a person in the
diegesis would describe as “fake,” Jahn dealt with the problem at its source. His subtypes
dealt with kinds of “perception” based on where they come from relative to the
focalizer's mind: from the inside (a priori) or from without (a posteriori). To Jahn, an
online perception comes from one or more of the primary senses, i.e. when a character
sees, touches, smells, hears, “olifactizes,” or does some other thing regarding the senses.
These things come from outside the mind. An offline perception comes from inside the
mind of a character or focalizer, with little or no input from the immediate diegesis.
Things one “perceives in recollection, vision, hallucination, and dream” (Jahn,
Focalization, 99). These “perceptions” are a priori the scenes.
This distinction solves two problems with Bal's p and np system. First, without this
distinction, it would be difficult if not impossible to understand how subjective
analepses, or, colloquially, flashbacks, work (Jahn, “Windows,” 248). Consider again the
sentence from The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo: “Kalle Blomkvist – she remembered his
nickname and suppressed the urge to say it out loud [...]” (Larsson 332). Any
narratologist would identify the middle part of the sentence, “she remembered his
nickname,” as internal focalization. But it is ambiguous whether “remembering” is really
an act of perception-- it doesn't actually “see” anything. It might be an act of cognition.
So Bal might describe this sentence as:
EF-[np CF (Lisbeth)]-p
Since there is no other character who can perceive Lisbeth's memory. But that's not right.
The nickname “Kalle Blomkist” isn't non-perceptible, nor is it strictly non-perceived-- it
just isn't being perceived actively right now by anyone other than Lisbeth. It isn't quite
perception and it isn't quite not. It is much more accurate to use Jahn's new term, offline,
because it doesn't pass judgment over “remembering” as perception or non-perception.
The character is subjectively re-experiencing an event that occurred previously. A better
way to put it might be:
EF-[off CF (Lisbeth)]-off
This term allows for a whole slew of questionably perceptive but definitely focalizing
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activities important to unwinding perception in Poe's stories: characters must be able to
remember, dream, and discover in addition to seeing, feeling, smelling, tasting, and
touching.
Second, online and offline perception are terms that allow for a wider definition of
“focalization,” than -p and -np would allow. Aside from just “remembering,” which is
ambiguously perceptive, what if a narratologist wanted to use, for example, RimmonKenan's definition of focalization which includes decidedly non-perceptive activities
such as thinking and feeling? Bal includes among -np only objects which are nonperceptible to one or more other characters, and includes among -p only objects when
there is “another character present that can also perceive the object” (Narratology, 153).
While this is a great distinction for describing a situation in which one character knows
something another character doesn't (like in a suspense story), it is not so great for
describing a narrative that moves freely between multiple character's thoughts, feelings,
perceptions, and deeds, especially when the things being “perceived” are not really
“perceived” but rather deduced simultaneously. Ideally, for a narrative like “The
Purloined Letter” in which a half dozen characters are all trying to outwit each other all
at the same time, it would be much better to use a term that could manage to express acts
of shared focalization without limiting those acts of focalization to diegetic sensual
perception. Neither Bal nor Genette's theory can do this alone.
The Purloined Perspective
Mieke Bal was the first to use the metaphor of the “chain” to describe different degrees
of focalization, and I find the metaphor appropriate. Each focalizing instance forms a
link that joins with another link. In order to reconstruct the narrative, the reader must
follow the chain from one link to the next, without losing track of any links, lest the
whole chain fall apart. In The Purloined Letter, there are three significant chains of
focalization. The first chain involves the characters in the immediate present diegesis:
the narrator, Dupin, and the police Prefect. They are the only characters who appear
directly, and the only characters with the power of direct discourse. The second chain
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involves characters focalized by Dupin and the Prefect in the near analeptic past. These
characters include Dupin (again), the Prefect (again), and a government Minister.
Finally, the third chain involves characters focalized by the Prefect in the distant
analeptic past, including a gentleman of royal standing, who has sometimes been referred
to as the “King,” a lady of royal standing, who has sometimes been called the “Queen,”
and the Minister. In the interest of conducting an analysis of the story in the simplest and
clearest manner possible, I will first construct the story's three chains of focalization
separately, and then link them only after they have been completely constructed. I will
also deal with the story's first scene separately from its second scene. These chains, as
Poe's narrator might suggest, must be disentangled before they can be analyzed.
In constructing these chains, I will use Bal's arthmetic system for tracing focalization,
Manfred Jahn's idea of online and offline perception, Rimmon-Kenan's idea of
conceptual, ideological, and analytic focalization, and Genette's concept of multiple,
variable, and fixed internal focalization. I do this in part to show how these theories can
be used together, and in part because I believe this way is the most complete and
accurate way of tracing the effect of focalization in the story.
In the first chain of the first scene, Poe introduces the reader to his three main characters:
the narrator, who we shall call “Edgar,” as not to confuse his function as narrator with his
function as focalizer, C. Auguste Dupin, an esteemed detective, and Prefect G-, a royal
policeman. The Prefect arrives in a dramatic fashion:
We had been sitting in the dark, and Dupin now arose for
the purpose of lighting a lamp, but sat down again, without
doing so, upon G.'s saying that he had called to consult us,
or rather to ask the opinion of my friend, about some official
business which had occasioned a great deal of trouble. (Poe,
“Purloined,” 281)
Within the first the first six sentences, Poe has already created a significant chain. The
first link, so to speak, is our narrator Edgar, who is watching Dupin. The second link is
Dupin himself, who sees the police Prefect. The police Prefect in turn sees Dupin and
Edgar, having come into the apartment for the purpose of seeking their council over a
certain story (the next link) he will then relate. So the whole chain might look like:
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on CF (“Edgar”)-[on CF (Dupin)]- [off CF (Prefect)]
Both “Edgar” and Dupin perceive the minister visually and aurally, while the Prefect's
vision is unimportant. He is focalized only, and occupies the lowest part of the chain. He
is offline because the things he perceives, that is, the story he is about to relate to Dupin
and “Edgar,” is still in his head. His low status in the focalization chain is even cause for
his ridicule. Dupin proceeds to insult him again and again for his lack of perception:
“Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing that puts you at fault,” Dupin says (282).
In the second chain of the first scene, the Prefect relates to Dupin and “Edgar” the
immediate events that occasioned his arrival. He has been tasked by a royal of high
standing (the “Queen”) to procure a certain letter that had been purloined from her by
Minister D-. He has been searching the apartments of the Minister for weeks, without
uncovering the letter or any sign of its existence. He describes his search:
My first care was to make through search of the Minister's
hotel; and here my chief embarrassment lay in the necessity
of searching without his knowledge. Beyond all things, I
have been warned of the danger which would result from
giving him reason to suspect our design. (284)
Here, the Prefect describes the events of the near past and the necessity that the Minister
remain unaware of the events as they occur. In this case, it might be better to use Mieke
Bal's -p and -np notation, because it is better than Jahn's online and offline distinction at
portraying imbalances in narrative perception. The Prefect sees what the Minister does
not. So:
CF (Prefect)- [p CF (Minister)]-np
The Prefect searches the apartment inch by inch with “the fine long needles you have
seen me employ” (286) careful not to emit a single sound so that he and his men may
remain undetected. His perceptive advantage (he sees that the Minister does not see)
briefly gives him narrative status.
Finally, in the third chain of the first scene, the Prefect describes to Dupin and “Edgar”
what events occurred in the distant past that started the chain of events that brought him
to their house. The Minister, he relates secondhand through memory, purloined a letter
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that, if disclosed “to a third person, who shall be nameless [the “King”], would bring in
question the honor of a personage of most exhausted station [the “Queen”]” (283). This is
offline character focalization. He is perceiving events from memory having only been
told about them. But the narrative chain does not stop there. The story the Prefect relates
is possibly the most involved set of acts of focalization in the entire story:
During [the letter's] perusal [the Queen] was suddenly
interrupted by the entrance of the other exalted personage
from whom especially it was her wish to conceal it. After a
hurried and vain endeavor to thrust it in the drawer, she was
forced to place it, open as it was, upon a table. […] At this
juncture enters the Minster D-. His lynx eye immediately
perceives the paper, recognizes the handwriting of the
address, observes the confusion of the personage addressed,
and fathoms her secret. After some business transactions […]
he produces a letter somewhat similar to the one in question.
[…] in taking leave, he takes also from the table the letter to
which he had no claim. Its rightful owner saw, but, of
course, dared not call attention to the act, in the presence of
the third personage who stood at her elbow. (283-4)
What remarkable acts of vision! In this text, there are four focalizers and five acts of
vision. First, the temporary character-focalizer, the Prefect, focalizes the the Queen,
through Rimmon-Kenan's function of memory. The Prefect is offline because he is
remembering. However, he is also p. Even though he is perceiving something that
neither Dupin or Edgar are privy to, he has total knowledge of the situation. In his
recollection, the Queen sees the King. She is aware that he is watching and indeed
watching herself, so she is online and p. The King sees the letter, but doesn't understand
what it means. He is online and np. When the Minister enters, the chain begins to branch
because there are then two characters focalizing multiple subjects. The Minister sees the
Queen, and not only immediately sees with his “lynx eye” that she is distressed, but also
immediately deduces the nature of the letter from the address and handwriting alone. In
this act of vision, he is online and p. He also sees the King, and deduces that the King is
still offline and np. When the Minister switches the letter, the Queen sees what he does.
She focalizes the Minster and remains online and p, but is powerless to stop him without
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drawing the King into an act of vision that will both turn him online and make him
focalize the letter. In arithmetic notation, the whole scene looks like this:
F1F2F3F4F5
off p CF (Prefect)[on p CF (Queen)][off np (King)]
[on p CF (Minister)][off np (King)]
[on p CF (Queen)][off np (King)]
[on p (Minister)]
In order to understand the story, all the reader has to do is follow this chain. The Prefect
sees the Queen. The Queen sees that the King does not see. The Queen also sees the
Minister. The Minister sees that the King does not see. The Minister also sees the Queen.
The Queen sees that the Minister sees her, but also sees that the King does not see, and is
therefore powerless. This branching effect is essentially Genette's idea of variable
focalization translated into Bal's arithmetic method. The focalization moves from
character to character, with sometimes the same character making two relevant glances.
The focalization alternates not randomly, but according to the chain.
Compared to the last chain, the first chain of the second scene is extremely simple.
Dupin and Edgar are once again sitting alone in their library when, once again, the
Prefect barges in. This chain is similar the first chain of the first scene. When Dupin
declares that he has acquired the purloined letter and will sell it to the Prefect for 50,000
Francs,
The Prefect appeared absolutely thunder-stricken. For some
minutes he remained speechless and motionless, looking
incredulously at my friend with open mouth, and eyes that
seemed starting from their sockets […] (289)
This time, instead of our narrator-focalizer Edgar focalizing Dupin who focalizes the
Prefect, our narrator-focalizer focalizes the Prefect who focalizes Dupin:
CF (Edgar)-[on CF (Prefect)]-[off (Dupin)]
This chain puts Dupin in an extremely high position of authority. While the two other
men are stuck gaping absurdly on (Edgar is “astounded” and the Prefect is
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“thunderstruck”), Dupin alone has the privilege of being offline. In this chain, offline
perception is implicitly compared to online perception, with understanding (an offline
form of focalization) being the ultimate goal. Dupin analyzes, while the Prefect can give
only “vacant stares” (289).
In the next chain, Dupin explains to Edgar the process by which he deduced the location
of the purloined letter. He does this through a series of anecdotes, which are a form of
offline perception. To take the most famous one, the anecdote about the boy who is very
good at playing an “even or odd” guessing game:
The game is simple, and is played with marbles. One player
holds in his hand a number of these toys, and demands of
another whether that number is even or odd. If the guess is
right, the guesser wins one; if wrong, he loses one. (290)
Here Dupin narrates, but drops all focalization whatsoever. He does not describe a
particular instance of the game, but how the game might be played between any two
people. He speakers of nonspecific “players.” There is no camera, so to speak, looking
upon them. Dupin's metaphor, then, looks like:
FF- off np
The narrator is imagining this example (offline), but not a particular example (free
focalization), and the example he recalls cannot be seen by any other person (np).
Indeed, no one can see it. He has focalized the instance so remotely that he might as well
not be focalized at all. However, this perspective distance allows the narrator to freely
compare the nature of the game to the nature of the situation at hand. “It is merely,” the
example ends, “an identification of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent”
(291).
In the final chain, Dupin explains how he was able to actually acquire the missing letter.
Interestingly enough, this segment of the story is in fixed focalization. We see through
Dupin's eyes and knows what Dupin knows. Dupin relates how, equipped with his
signature pair of green spectacles, he called upon the Minister one morning as if by
accident. Poe goes to great length to emphasize the eyes. “I complained of my weak
eyes,” (296), “at length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room […]” (297), “no sooner
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had I glanced at this letter [...]” (297). Once again, Poe returns to purely online acts of
perception. This is not more apparent then when Dupin actually snatches the letter out
from the Minister's hiding place:
While thus engaged, however, a loud report, as if of a pistol,
was heard immediately beneath the windows of the hotel,
and was succeeded by a series of fearful screams, and the
shoutings of a mob. D-- rushed to a casement, threw it open,
and looked out. In the meantime, I stepped to the card-rack,
took the letter, [and] put it in my pocket. (298)
In this manner, Poe manages to put the Minister in the lowest position possible. He is
literally at the bottom of the chain of the entire story.
CF (Dupin) – [on CF (Minister)] – on
Not only is he at the bottom of the chain of perspective, but he is also online. All three
chains in the second half of the story have one thing in common: being online is a bad
thing. This is no exception. The cunning Minister is distracted not by a mind game or a
puzzle or a battle of wits, but by a simple physical musket shot which causes him to run
to the window and “look out.” He is undone by an actual act of vision, not a mental one.
There is no lower status Poe could put him in-- when all the chains from both halves of
the story are combined, he ends up dead last.
When all the chains from both halves of the story are put together, Poe's narrative project
becomes clear: there is something undeniably interesting, something quite seductive,
about having to follow these chains of vision to the start. Poe challenges the reader to see
not only the text, but to perceive it offline-- to think about it, analyze it, and make
deductions about it. But what about the chains themselves? What do these chains
accomplish, and what do they mean?
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