First Person and Peripheral Narration in Prose

It's pretty important to remember to talk about a novel's point of view in your prose essays.

What is the point of view you ask?

(of course you didn't actually ask - but lemme clarify so I can pretend to be smart). Point of view my darling non-existent friend, is simply the perspective the story is told from. It's kinda like whose telling it or whose eyes you're seeing through. There are several points of view an author has the option of writing with...(for example):

There's the most obvious one and the one that we all probably exclusively used as ten year olds; the first person narrator.
eg. I wake up in the morning feeling like P Diddy. Weeee are the championsss. I like big butts and I cannot lie.
What we realised this does is tell the story first hand from someone experiencing it. This is their story and although we may hear it referred to as the "I" narrator, it could also be told from the point of view of a group of people using the pronoun "We". 

The only book I could think of off the top of my head that uses the plural form of the first person narrator is 'The Virgin Suicides' (eg. Whenever we saw Mrs. Lisbon we looked in vain for some sign of the beauty that must have once been hers).
I haven't read every single book on the CAPE syllabus (so forgive me) but the two books that I can think of that use this style are 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Wuthering Heights'. Now this may be a bit confusing since if you read either of these books, you'll realise that although the narrators are characters in the story and speak directly through experiences, it's not necessarily their story; they're simply side characters telling the story of the protagonist (or protagonists). There is a special word for these kinda narrators; they're called peripheral narrators. 

In Wuthering Heights we have Lockwood telling his little side story about how he buy a house and meet a girl and doh like people but that not really important - no one quotes him toting about life, everyone quotes Cathy and her whole "Nelly, I am Heathcliff!" scene. Don't let this confuse you though - it's still first person narration (remember the I/we thing kinda gives it away).

In The Great Gatsby, although Nick is a bit closer to the narrator, he's hardly the protagonist (I mean the book's called The Great Gatsby not The Great Carraway).


So why use these narrators -wouldn't it be simpler if you stick to the regular "I woke up on sunny day"?

LIST TIME! (AKA WHY WE USE PERIPHERAL INSTEAD OF FIRST PERSON)

1.  Societal perspective - a lot of the time the author is using the periphery narrator as a social gauge; they judge the protagonist for you. This is helpful when studying such weirdos like Gatsby and Healthcliff because well, they're weirdos. As you may have noticed both Nick and Lockwood are foreigners who encounter the protagonists when they move (temporarily) right next door to them. Them being foreigners is important because it makes them more critical and less biased and affected by the weirdness around them. The author wants the reader to know what their society thought about characters like them, and what better way to do that than put you in a regular ole person's shoes? (This also works for the Virgin Suicides - yeah peripheral narrators there too). The authors are judging society and making you question your morals as you go along! How fun! 
2.  Enigma - That's fancy for mystery. The author probably wants the reader to view the protagonist as an inexplicable creature. We actually know this is true; look at Gatsby and Healthcliff (aren't you all dying to compare these two?) for a good bit of the story we didn't know who Gatsby was or where he came from or how he got rich, we just knew the man like to fete. And the same goes for Healthcliff, hell the story finished and they had kids and shit and we still didn't know what drain Mr. Earnshaw pulled him out from or if that was his horna child or what. And what does all of this do? Say it with me potentially brainwashed CAPE students; it adds suspense!
3. The character doesn't change much - Not all protagonists are the reflective type. They don't know they're going through major life changes and they don't make the effort to think about these things. They don't change from the beginning of the story to the end. Take Gatsby for example; Gatsby remained Gatsby through and through. The only thing that changed about him was our perspective of him (toting over a girl does not change who you are - he was a toter all along, he just hid it before). Now if we got this from his point of view things would be totally different; he'd just be like...I was poor but I wanted to be rich and I liked this girl but she was rich so I made friends and illegal money but she married a dude and I toted and tried to win her back with money and blah blah. Given Gatsby's personality it would be hard to get the whole "American Dream" point across through his Daisy obsession. 
4. The character is difficult to relate to - Raise your hand if you're an orphaned Moor that was rescued by some dude who brought you to his house in the middle of fucking nowhere only to die and leave you with his abusive son and sexy daughter! Ok, now raise your hand if you were ever in a new place and felt awkward and didn't know anyone! Hopefully more people related to the latter (or else that would ruin my entire point) because not everyone has been through the epic lives of these literary heros. We're just plain old teenagers living in a different century with nothing to do other than Literature homework, it's easier for us to relate to the someone a little more generic and bland. Remember these characters represent society and needs to be relatable to the masses... universality is key for good literature! 
5. *SPOILER* They die. Well you're reading lit notes, what do you expect? How would you write this in first person? Would Healthcliff just die? How would he go about narrating while he dies? How would we get that cool parallel between the second generation if he's dead (unless he comes back as a weird introspective ghost)? You can typically tell a character isn't gonna die if they're narrating and well all these protagonists die (including the Lisbon girls). 

Well that's all the important things I could think of right now. Feel free to add to it or tell me I'm an idiot in the comments (if you're calling me an idiot you need to justify it with examples though).