Robert Frost's 'First Person Narration'

pronoun “I”, providing more description than usual. Moreover we come to know about the inner thoughts and opinions of the character through his speech. Here, in these lines an extensive description of the surrounding is provided as “brown fog of winter dawn”, “crowd flowed over London Bridge”, “Sighs”, “fixed his eyes before his feet”. All these point toward the fact that the narrator has himself observed his surrounding keenly. Additionally, in this part of poem First person narration is used as “I had not thought”, “I saw one I knew”. It seems as well that the narrator is protagonist of this part of poem as well as the only main character.
In second section, lines 77-110 are actually a commentary regarding the description of surrounding of a character, the aristocratic lady. This type of narrator is called the “Commentator”. The commentator provides a detailed description of a place or something without himself being involved physically in the event or acting as a character in the event. When we consider these lines other …show more content…
An observer narrator may tell the story using First person or Third person pronoun but does not plays any major role in narrating the events. He may act as a “witness” of the events mentioned but most of the times an observer narrator just describe apparent events rather than internal feelings or emotions of a character. In these lines (173-206), narrator seems to be giving us an insight of merely the physical events or surroundings in the environment as “broken river tent”, “departed nymphs”, “river Thames”. The narrator then switches to “First Person Narration” as: “till I end my song”, “I sat down and wept”, “I hear” and “I was fishing”. But the narrator does not have any significant role in events that are going on. He acts passively on the changes occurring in the environment and appears to be merely singing, weeping, hearing, or