The Narrator in Nguyen Ngoc Tu's Short Stories

"brother" [83, p.30]. Or in Co con thuyen da boi boi bo... , the third-person narrator stands somewhere quite close to the character and observes, analyzes, and understands each action, gesture, and attitude of the character: "Be also laughed, feeling her back tired, because it had been held up for so long, she wanted to let it drift down. But like that, she would not have the leisurely urban appearance, she puffed out her chest and straightened her back. Be kept the gait that she considered elegant, leisurely and leisurely going up and down the market and then back down. She looked around in confusion, bumping into a few people in front of her" [86, p.37]. The narrator has an observational position outside the character's world, the narrator does not tell the story from the perspective of any character but from his own perspective. According to Booth's concept and those with the same concept, only the narrator in this case can be called an implied narrator. But here W. Booth and many others were wrong because the authors did not clearly distinguish between the observing subject and the speaking subject, so they identified the reflector with the person who recounts the reflector's actions. In fact, this is just a case of an implied narrator.

In stories with an implicit narrator telling from the character's point of view, the narrator cleverly gives the character the task of telling the story. Here, the narrator has blended into the character to the point that it is difficult to distinguish the narrator's voice from the character's voice. And often, we only notice the character's voice, the character's voice is more prominent. For example, in The Vast Sea of People , the narrator relied on the actions of the character Phi to tell: "holding his hand to help him up, lifting him onto his shoulder like lifting a ten-year-old child", "Phi went to catch termites to feed it", "Phi opened the cage door, the cuckoo bird flapped its wings"... The narrator observed and felt according to Phi's feelings: "Mom often came to visit Phi, usually alone. Busy, hurried, even doing nothing was in a hurry", "Phi's father was in meetings, working all the time, Phi rarely saw him.

He changed a lot, his appearance, his demeanor, but when he met Phi, his gaze was still the same, cold, sour, and bitterly mocking. But, my father absolutely did not look at me like that"... First of all, Phi is the character in action, the subject of the action being narrated, the subject in the sentence, he belongs to the reality being talked about. But on the other hand, reading this work, we see that throughout the story, Phi is not the narrator who speaks by his own name, but someone else is telling about Phi, telling about other characters in the story. So when talking about Phi's story in the relationship with his parents, with old man Sau Deo, there must be someone else doing the work of taking minutes, telling those things. The person taking minutes in this case is none other than the implied narrator. The narrator has hidden himself, standing behind the character and the events to tell the story by pushing the character to the reader's eyes. And so, before the reader's eyes, there is no one speaking, only the reality being presented. In Diep's story , the implicit narrator relied on the character Diep's point of view to tell the story. Only then could he easily penetrate the character's inner life: "Diep saw her grandmother shed tears. From then on, Diep always said she missed her mother, missed her mother so much. Mother only came back once in a while. Sometimes she came back pregnant, sometimes she came back with a baby. Diep went with the troupe, rarely saw her mother. So she didn't mention her mother anymore. Diep was indifferent, considering it a way to torture her mother. It's strange to think that in life, people think that scolding and tearing each other apart means losing love. Being cold to each other doesn't have any love" [88, pp.52-53]. Or in the story Flowing Water and Floating Clouds , the implicit narrator also borrowed the voice of a character in the story to tell the story - the character Diep. "The day before going to Dat Moi to start the new school year, Diep took her mother to have her teeth pulled. On the way back, Diep heard her mother's tears falling on his back. Mom complained sadly, because her mouth was still filled with cotton, her voice was hoarse (or was it because she was crying?), she said she didn't know if Mr. Nhien would criticize her for being old. Diep knew what Mom said was true, Mom

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crying because one day mother will be far away from Diep, but mother and daughter Diep understood deep down, teacher Nhien is not someone who cares about such trivial matters (…). Every meal, father washes vegetables by hand, even though mother has washed them, father has to wash them again (Diep suspected that mother's love was lost because of that, even washing vegetables they don't trust each other). Father doesn't eat at sidewalk restaurants, refuses dishes like fish sauce, father said eating like that is unhygienic. Father forces mother to cook pumpkin soup six times a week, so that Diep can eat smart, study well, and follow in his father's footsteps. But Diep only wants to be a teacher. A teacher will not lose her love because of naughty students, will not lose her passion because of this or that competition title. Just like teacher Nhien" [88, pp.133-136]. From Diep's point of view, we can imagine the relationship between the characters in the story: Diep's mother, father, and teacher Nhien are seen from Diep, in their relationship with Diep. With this type of narration, the narrator can easily grasp the inner lives of the characters, easily blend into Diep's family and place each member of that family before the reader without any introduction. This type of narration also creates in the reader a direct feeling, close to the world of the characters, making us not feel like we are listening to a story but rather directly witnessing the story of Diep's family.

2.1.4. Narrator's point of view in Nguyen Ngoc Tu's short stories - issues to be discussed

The narrator is a character in a narrative literary work. The author created this character as well as other characters in the story. But unlike other characters, the narrator character is given a special task (function) by the author, which is to retell the story , or to organize the story to be told , so that the literary work becomes an aesthetic, unified, and complete whole. Regarding the narrator's point of view, we often encounter first-person or third-person narrators, which rarely exist.

in the second person narrator. The short story of the young female writer Nguyen Ngoc Tu also follows this common sense as we have just presented, analyzed, and explained above.

But in some of Nguyen Ngoc Tu's stories, the narrator's point of view is quite unique compared to other prose writers in the past as well as the present. We have not yet identified (named) this phenomenon, so first we would like to state that: Normally, in every narrative literary work, there is always a narrator who exists in the first person or third person. Even if the narrator lets a few other characters tell parts, paragraphs, or even the entire story, the narrator is still present as the overarching character , directing the entire story. Therefore, in the theory of narratology as well as the practice of literary criticism research (based on narratology), researchers have clearly determined the narrator's point of view in a work as the first person or third person.

But in some stories by Nguyen Ngoc Tu, things do not happen like that.

A Date , the first 10 pages of the story are told by an anonymous narrator (third person) about a date between a woman and a man from the perspective, words, and tone of a character in the story (Toad). They are coastal residents, the woman rowed a boat to a hut in a coastal lagoon - a place for raising seafood during the time when a storm was about to hit:

“Toad could not continue, because he had to cover his eyes with his hands. He could not tell, because if he told, people would discover that he was peeking through his fingers, that Toad was just like the common people (…), he discovered that something unfortunate had happened. The boat was drifting. Both boats had slipped out of their ropes (…). Toad was frightened, jumped up, and cried, “The boat is drifting! The boat is gone!” [85, p.110].

When the woman woke up with a start, she cried out in panic: “Oh my God! Brother! Someone took our boat. Everything is gone.”

Funny frog, in a storm like this, who would dare to go out to the middle of the pond to get a boat? It’s drifting away, sister. I screamed until my throat was sore, but you didn’t listen, just bear with it…” [85, p.110].

Right after 10 pages are 8 lines concluding the story:

“In the days after the storm, I often went to Dam Sau alone, wondering what wind blew my mother off the boat, and where she fell, where she was buried by the storm? Unable to mark in the water, I carved on the side of the boat, near the stern, where my mother often sat and swam. Once, stopping by the abandoned hut, I saw Toad looking at me, as if crying. Maybe it was because I was crying, that I thought so…” [85, p.116].

The pronoun “I” has appeared clearly, so the last 8 lines of the story are told by the first person narrator. Therefore, it is impossible to determine whether A Date Story has a first person or third person narrative, but the narrative of the story must be both first person and third person. The first 10 pages have an anonymous third person narrator, while the last 8 lines of the story are in the first person. There is no single, unified narrator who is capable of covering the entire paragraph in the text mentioned above.

In Endless Field , the first 56 pages of the story are told by the narrator, who calls himself “I” – a character in the story (a girl named Nuong). At the beginning of the story, we learn some information: “The small canal lies across a large field. When we decided to stop, the fierce drought seemed to gather all the sunlight to pour down on this place (…). My father removed the bamboo frame from the bottom of the boat (…). I carried the stove to the shore to gather firewood” [83, pp.163-164]. Thus, throughout the 56 pages, the story is told from the first person.

But at the end of the 18 lines of the story, we read: “…The sun was shining again when there were only two crumpled bodies left on the field. Someone threw bunches of swallows high up in the air, they tried to fly so as not to fall like leaves. The father took off his shirt to cover his daughter. He crawled around her, looking for anything to cover her body from the sun. It seemed that the daughter was dying, only her eyes were blinking open and closed. The first thing she asked was:

- I wonder if I have children, dad?

It was a little scary. It felt like something, tiny but nimble like a larva, was swimming inside it. The girl thought for a moment, tears welling up in her eyes, oh my god, maybe I will have a baby. But she accepted it, even though it was cruel (for her, accepting was also a habit).

That child will definitely be named Thuong, Nho, Dieu, Xuyen, Huong… The child will have no father but will definitely go to school, will be cheerful and happy for the rest of his life, because his mother taught him that as a child, sometimes we should forgive the mistakes of adults” [83, p.218].

These 18 lines of the text are narrated by an anonymous third-person narrator. And that means it is impossible to affirm without correction, without further explanation whether the narrator of Endless Field is first-person or third-person (only one of the two can be chosen).

The story "Water Like Tears" also has a similar phenomenon. The first 21 pages of the story are told by a third-person narrator. The third-person narrator tells about Sao's life: after getting married, Sao's husband was murdered, Sao sought revenge for her husband, but Sao's enemy was her lover and that person had been waiting for her for seven years. Here, the narrator is hidden, standing behind the characters and the events being told.

But in the last paragraph (3 lines) of the story, we encounter a narrator who appears directly using the pronoun “I”: “… Then, someone asked what happened to those two. I don’t know, I didn’t follow them. When I saw them leave, I knew they had left, that’s all” [86, p.30].

With the appearance of two narrators with two narrative positions (first-person narrator in the first 21 pages of the story and third-person narrator in the last 3 lines), the short story Water Like Tears does not have a single narrator and thus does not have a narrator with a single narrative position.

Through the above survey, we see that in some of Nguyen Ngoc Tu's stories, the narrator's point of view is not the only one present. In other words, some of her stories do not have a single narrator who is comprehensive, in charge, and dominates the entire story because in the story there are two points of view, including the first person and the third person. These two points of view have equal roles and functions.

2.2. Some types of narrators in Nguyen Ngoc Tu's short stories

If based on different criteria, we will have different ways of classifying the types of narrators. Based on the relationship between the narrator and the reader, we have unreliable narrators and reliable narrators; based on the narrator's attitude towards what is being told, we have objective narrators and subjective narrators... In this thesis, we base on the viewpoint criterion to divide the narrators in Nguyen Ngoc Tu's short stories into types: narrators who tell from a limited viewpoint - the character's viewpoint and narrators who tell from an omniscient viewpoint - the narrator who tells from an all-knowing viewpoint.

2.2.1. The narrator tells the story from a limited point of view.

* This is the case where the narrator limits his narrative point of view and the character's point of view, he penetrates the character's emotions and thoughts, and sees the world through the character's eyes. G.Genette calls this "the narrator tells with an internal focus" and Todorov calls it "the narrator tells the story through the character". In this case, the distance between the character and the narrator seems to disappear, the character is no longer a mystery to the narrator. The narrator has the ability to deeply understand all the hidden secrets in the character's soul.

In most of Nguyen Ngoc Tu's short stories, the narrator tells the story from a limited point of view, a third-person narrator from the outside but relying on the character's point of view to tell the story, creating a multi-subject narrative form.

There are works in which the implicit narrator relies almost exclusively on the point of view of one character. A dating story , in the first 10 pages the narrator stands in the third person from the outside, relying on the point of view of the character to tell the story - that is the character of Toad. The narrator has given the right to tell the story to Toad so that Toad can express his own thoughts and feelings about the event that Toad witnessed. That is Toad's feeling about the storm that has come to Dam Sau: "It's raining. Not the kind of wet, sloppy, watery, gentle rain that Toad is used to, it feels a bit stinging, as dry as a dry laugh" [85, p.105]. Those are Toad's thoughts when witnessing a secret, clandestine date between a woman and a man: "They came here in the late afternoon, when the sky still had a wilting beam of sunlight. As if they happened to pass by this abandoned hut, happened to see an acquaintance and stopped by” [85, p.106]. It was the choking, sorrow, and torment of Toad when recalling the feeling of a secret date like this that Toad had experienced: “Toad had also dated before, so Toad knew. It included a series of continuous defeats, at first it was the shock when meeting, leaving, the feeling of failure would gnaw at the other person’s heart, why did I get so agitated, I had no right to be agitated, I no longer had the right to be agitated. The next times they met, the longing would tighten even more… Leaving, then what, tomorrow, the future?… Toad had dated before, so Toad knew. Heavy, hurtful” [85, p.107]. It was Toad’s sympathy and compassion for that woman: “Toad wanted to cry, feeling sorry for her desperate situation. And the ultimate loneliness, even though that man would squeeze her into his arms again. If it were him, Toad would just sit silently, listening to the story of a friend, listening to the indifferent voice that covered the sound of a person's aching heart" [85, p.114]. It is thanks to relying on Toad's point of view that the narrator has faithfully recreated Toad's thoughts, moods, and genuine, lingering emotions. But at times the narrator has revealed a limited point of view.

The Narrator in Nguyen Ngoc Tu's Short Stories - Issues to Discuss

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