"What is Free Indirect Discourse?": A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers

[@SWLF]

Please share your favorite examples of free indirect discourse or your question on the term in the comments below! Doing so will help us to build a rich digital learning environment around this topic.

[@victoriaguzman7126]

My favorite example was when you showed how the text would look if it were written in the normal third-person view. Thank you for this great quality video!

[@SWLF]

Thanks so much, Victoria! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well!

[@leetintary5710]

This comment isn't necessarily about free indirect discourse but the video made me think of it; I'm curious about the POV throughout The Great Gatsby. Of course, it's first person POV through Nick's eyes, but in both chapter six as Nick recounts the story of James Gatz and again in chapter eight as Nick relates Gatsby's first time going into Daisy's home the perspective seems to slip into limited omniscience - it's hard to imagine either Gatsby having this much critical perspective on himself as he relates these details to Nick or Nick being privy to some of the details without being an omniscient narrator. How would we describe these complexities in the narration?

[@SWLF]

Great question, Lee! We agree that both passages, if taken literally, offer very strange changes in POV. One way to think of the ham-handed justification that Nick offers for knowing Gatsby's backstory ("He told me all this very much later, but I've put it down here...") is to mark it as a flaw in the relationship between plot and narrative that Fitzgerald couldn't resolve. A more charitable (and, to us, more interesting) reading would be to understand those moments as calling attention to Nick's unreliability as a narrator. While Nick insists at one point thay "I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known," his narrative's relationship with reality is often as fantastical as Gatsby's. Nick believes in Gatsby in a manner similar to the way that Gatsby believes in Daisy, and in that flashback, we're given insight into that belief. That's our two cents. What does everybody else think?

[@leetintary5710]

@@SWLF Yes, I actually think these narrative "flashbacks" are more of a strength than a weakness in the novel, but where the shift to omniscience becomes more clear cut is in chapter eight when Nick begins to describe details about Daisy that would have been impossible for either himself or Gatsby to have known: "And all the time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately--and the decision must be made by some force--of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality--that was close at hand." Now of course, it's plausible that Daisy revealed all of this to Gatsby in her letters full of "nervous despair," but it's also not very likely. I am reading Fitzgerald's "The Rich Boy" at the moment and it's interesting that the first person narrator doesn't use "I" until the ninth paragraph and not again until about Part V of the story, while in between full omniscience of Anson Hunter and Paula Legendre takes over in the narration. I have a considerable amount of Fitzgerald to still read, but I'm wondering if a plasticity to POV was a regular feature of his work.

[@Khatoon170]

Free indirect discourse means of representing thought of speech of character in narrative, in context of narrator discourse, which subjectivity and dialogue of characters are preserved but shifts in person and tense , that ordinarily, accompany situation of character discourse are not . For example if were conventional third person of point of view , we get same Division between narrator and Connie , which might looks on thing like Connie thought . She was pretty and she believed that was most important thing . She could be , but instead with free indirect discourse, we see world as Connie. When writing free indirect style , author eliminates dialogue tags authorial flagging , merging reader in mind of character wood argues . Omniscient narrator draws attention to author intentionally exposing knowledge and writing acumen. Thank you for your wonderful educational literary channel.

[@SWLF]

Thanks for the comment, Khatoon! Free indirect discourse is a slippery topic but one that is an incredibly powerful tool for authors to use to bring us closer to their characters.

[@ekselddurppy9099]

Thank you for this! I understand FID a lot more thanks to your great examples. I’ve been thinking about using FID for one of my writing essays. Do you have any tips or tricks for a beginner in FID like me?

[@SWLF]

Thanks so much, Ekseld! We don't have any tips beyond reading widely and seeing how other authors use this strange form. Jane Austen and the other authors we mention in the video use the form, but it is EVERYWHERE in major fiction of the 20th and 21st centuries. Check out Colson Whitehead's rather disturbing use of the form in the opening chapters to Underground Railroad. Or Jhumpa Lahiri's lighter touch in her great short story "Sexy." Learning how to spot subtle introductions of FID in other people's writing will help you to decide how overt you want your FID writing to be.

[@sobhanmarshall2527]

Thank you for this informative video. Can you give any examples of FID from Pride and Prejudice as well?

[@SWLF]

Thanks for the suggestion, Sobhan! Jane Austen is a master of FID, and we'll be happy to consider adding a supplemental video here if you think it'd be useful. Our series is currently on pause for COVID precautions, but we'll try to start it up again as soon as we can!

[@yueyue9665]

@@SWLF oohhh I'd love that especially if it's examples from Persuasion :) which I'm currently reading for the first time trying to spot FID examples

[@SWLF]

@@yueyue9665 Thanks for the suggestion, yueyue96!

[@yueyue9665]

thank you that was really useful, I'm still trying to wrap my head around this but I'm beginning to get it :D

[@SWLF]

Excellent! And yes, identifying free indirect discourse definitely gets easier with practice!

[@stevebruns1833]

Still struggling with this concept. Isn't this a form of "head hopping" but between the narrator and the POV character? I can just hear someone in a critique saying, "That's head hopping!" or "Don't summarize what the character thinks, just show the thoughts themselves." Also, the examples I see cited (here and elsewhere) are either literary fiction or from well before the modern era. Is this the case, or does genre fiction (science fiction, etc.) use it broadly as well?

[@SWLF]

Interesting question, Steve! Traditional "head hopping" in a third-person perspective happens all the time, but it will always be marked by a separation between narrator and character. FID was a HIGHOY experimental narrative mode in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and is typically associated with "literary" fiction, but we think it is a fairly common narrative mode in the present. Kim Stanley Robinson, for example, uses free-indirect discourse in quite a few of his novels, as we recall. William Gibson too.

[@stevebruns1833]

@@SWLF Thanks--I'll check my copy of Red Mars. Also, I've been told that Elmore Leonard used it quite often, so I'm going to check a few of his books. I think I actually have used it myself, but tend to steer clear of it due to advice to "show, don't tell" and "don't head hop."

[@chiaragiordano2371]

So what's the difference between Free Direct Speech and Free Indirect Speech?

[@SWLF]

Interesting question. Direct speech is the actual words that a character speaks (or thinks, if it is an internal monologue). "'I'm starving!' cried the boy" is an example of direct speech. Indirect speech is speech that is reported or paraphrased or somehow turned into the narrator's own words. So in indirect speech, that might look something like "The boy complained that he was hungry." Given the fact that free indirect discourse is a third person form of narration, it is reported (like all indirect speech) but the report is delivered in such a way as to take on the characteristic style or worldview of a given character. It is sort of halfway between direct and indirect speech. There is no equivalent for direct speech, so the phrase "free direct speech" isn't a useful term in literary analyses. Hope that helps!

[@inkslinging]

In free indirect discourse, when the narrator drops into the perspective of the character, should the verb tense remain the same. In other words, if the story is being narrated in past tense, and then the narrator merges with the character to express a thought, question, or observation, should the line remain in past tense, or can it switch to present tense to indicate that we are now in the character's pov? I think the answer is that the verb tense should remain in past tense in this example (remain the same generally), but I wanted to hear from someone who actually studies this.

[@SWLF]

What and interesting question, inklinging! We'd say yes, that can happen. Check out Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" for an example of how the verb tenses change from past to present at a given moment in that story.

[@JacobYuanHang]

great examples and explanations.

[@SWLF]

Thanks so much, Jacob! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well!

[@WhiteRabbit2719]

Can FID happens in first person narrative?

[@SWLF]

Great question! Free indirect discourse can only occur in 3rd person narratives. If it was first person, there wouldn't be a blending of the narrator's and a given character's perspective because they would be the same entity.

[@WhiteRabbit2719]

@@SWLF Thank you for the answer! But I also have another question, is there any way to differentiate when the character act as a narrator and when the character act as a character in first person narrative? My lecturer said we can use speech and thought presentation but I’m having a hard time trying to understand it.

[@bibvx]

What’s the difference between free indirect speech and free direct speech?

[@SWLF]

Interesting question, Bibax! Direct speech is often enclosed in quotation marks and constitutes the direct thoughts or words of a given character. So free direct speech would be, most commonly, a collection of direct quotations from a variety of sources ( hence "free" here). Free indirect discourse tells a character's perspective in a way corresponding to the blending of perspectives described in this video. Thanks for keeping the conversation going!

[@brokeneggshell5041]

1:11 - short story example

[@SWLF]

Though one that does not exemplify free indirect discourse--those two come later...

[@hemalakshmi4250]

Thank you sir ☺

[@SWLF]

Thanks so much for all your support, Hema!

[@johnsmith-tq5zn]

In free indirect discourse, does "Oh my God" become "Oh his/her God"?

[@SWLF]

Interesting question, john! We'd say no--"Oh his/her God" is closer to traditional third-person. For example, if a third-person narrator was, say, describing a baseball game, and a fan of the batter was the person who "infected" the third-person narrator, the description might read something like "Oh my God, what a hit!" to reflect the fact that the excitement is coming from that fan.

[@johnsmith-tq5zn]

@@SWLF I have written this sentence in my manuscript (the story is written in free indirect discourse): "Oh his God, it's really going to happen. He's going to have his first kiss." Should I change it? If so, how would you rewrite it?

[@SWLF]

Hmm, how about "Oh God, it is really going to happen..."? Anyone else out there want to give it a try?

[@johnsmith-tq5zn]

@@SWLF "Oh God" is used for bad things. His first kiss is not a bad thing.

[@swerakhan3385]

While watching the video it seem like ... Whoa I've get it!!... After the video I don't even really know what I've heard😑

[@SWLF]

Ha! It gets easier with practice for sure, Swera. The video is covering a lot of ground, but the more you look for FID, the more you'll find it in modern and contemporary narratives.

[@octoberdawn1087]

I've been pronouncing narrator very wrong 😐

[@SWLF]

Ha! No worries, octoberdawn1087! We're not fussy about pronunciation--the important thing is the concept. And we hope you found the video useful!

[@philomenamuinzer4805]

My first feeling is that the depressing term "free indirect discourse" is a dry, empirical, mechanical and totally ungraceful jargon inappropriate to describe a technique that embodies fluent and subtle virtuosity.

[@SWLF]

Ha! Thanks for the comment, Philomena. It isn't the most elegant phrase in the world, but it is how people tend to refer to the technique.

[@philomenamuinzer4805]

@@SWLF Yes, you'd think people who deal daily in beautiful words, would adopt more beautiful terminology.