can someone explain third person omniscient narrator?

Answer 1

Third person omniscient narration is like being a fly on the wall. It allows you to report on the thoughts and actions of ALL characters in the story. It is a sweeping, panoramic type of narration. Usually it is done in the past tense as though the narrator is telling a story that has already transpired in its entirety to someone. That means they already know the ending when they tell the beginning because the whole story is over by then.

First person narration limits you to reporting on only the thoughts of the narrator and only the things the narrator sees or knows. It can be cumbersome if you need to report some information and the narrator is not present at the time. A good example is The Great Gatsby. The narrator, Nick, is in virtually every scene in the book otherwise he cannot tell the story.

You can also have a third person limited narrator or an antagonist or protagonist who narrates and refers to himself in the third person. An example of that would be Alex in A Clockwork Orange.

There are two types of narrators - reliable and unreliable, and any narrator - first or third person - can be either one.

This is from Wiki ...

An unreliable narrator is a force behind the power of first person narratives, and provides the only unbiased clues about the character of the narrator. To some extent all narrators are unreliable, varying in degree from trust-worthy Ishmael in Moby Dick to the mentally disabled Benjy in The Sound and the Fury and the criminal Humbert Humbert in Lolita. Other notable examples of unreliable narrators include the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day, Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye and Verbal Kint in the film The Usual Suspects. All of Henry James's fiction is based on the narrator's point of view and the limitations of their narrations and the motivation behind what they reveal.
Unreliable narrators aren't limited to fiction. Memoirs, autobiographies and autobiographical fiction have the author as narrator and character. Sometimes the author purposely makes his narrator persona unreliable such as Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries.

Hope that helps. Glad to help out young authors who ask great questions here. Pax - C

Answer 2

You've already got some great answers.
I'll just add one thing: There is also the aspect of "distance".
A narrator can get you right inside the skin of a character, so that you feel, see, smell, etc. everything the character does.
Or--the narration could be more distant, like the 'fly on the wall' giving dispasionate observations.
This distance thing can be to any degree, from so close it's almost first person, to so distant, it's almost omniscient.
Each way gives a different effect.
This is one way to control points of view. A third person story still has a specific POV character, but you don't want too many. A couple of main characters is usually best, but sometimes a story needs to have information from a minor character---and that's when a shift from close 3rd person to distant 3rd person comes in handy.
I hope I explained this well.

Answer 3

An omniscient narrator, in the third person has no action or part of the story - they are a godlike feature to the story knowing everything - all facts of the story. They have knowledge of all the facts of the situations, events, and characters. It often gives a overall feeling to the story, as in being told from above or beyond the story - it usually gives you the story with all view points of the characters - rather than being told by one person with only side... ie... I saw, I did. Rather the third person omniscient narrator tells the story of all the characters independently and often will hop from one character to the next. Third-person omniscient says "I am the storyteller, and you are the listener, and together we will find out what happens." and examples of this style of writing would be like Leo Tolstoy, Homer, and my personal favorite Huxley's Brave New World.

Answer 4

i think that third person and omniscient narrators are more or less the same thing. in the 3rd person, the narrator can tell the actions and thoughts of all of the characters (he did this, she felt that, they said this), so that they are, in effect, omniscient, or all-knowing. it is the supposedly most desirable type of narrative, for most types of fiction. (of course they -- the narrator -- do not always have to explain everything, but could, using 3rd person omniscient).

Answer 5

Some practical examples.

The least used narrator is the second person:

You leave your house late that night and face the rain alone. After starting your car you ease into the traffic, not wanting to draw any attention. Soon you arrive. . .

This is the most difficult narration and the least one used.

Next is the third person omniscient:

Jack walked into the room and gave Linda a big smile, hiding his hatred of her and her two simpering children.

She smiled back, resisting the urge to run up and hug him. She so desperately desired his touch, surely he was the man to raise her children . . .

Note the narrator knows what is going on in everyone's head. This type of writing is sort of passe now, not used a lot.

Next is first person narrative:

I woke up and turned off my alarm, my hand brushing the new bottle of sleeping pills on my bedstand. The bottle I will empty tonight so I will never have to wake up again . . .

Used a lot and is best for allowing the reader to fully get into the lead characer. But you are limited in the story's scope since you are limited to the main character's head.

The final and most used is third person limited. That is, you are able to step into the minds of one person at a time. This gives you the scope of third person onmiscient, yet the more intimate scope of the first person. Seperate point of view changes with extra spaces or a symbol:

Bob glanced over at Glenda beside him in the car. He loved the way her breasts swayed with the bumps on the road. She had a nice smile, he really enjoyed giving her rides to work, but she seemed to need them so rarely. Was this her way of letting him know she was interested? He looked up to her face. She was smiling. Such a pleasant woman. He decided to ask her out as he dropped her off, when she would feel most gratified by his big favor . . .
******************************
Glenda sat beside Bob the pig. God, how she hated it when her car broke down and her friends were unavailable. She felt his gaze upon her as he drove over some bumps. The pig was oogling her boobs, no doubt. She smiled, it was they only way to stop herself from smacking him in the face. By the time they would arrive at her work she knew she would be so angry with him that . . .

Answer 6

It means that the narrator is not a character from the book, and also that he knows everything going on. He can hear the thoughts of all the characters.