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<title> The importance of narrator. </title>
My essay will deal with the narrators importance when it comes to supplying the reader with information. The narrator can be very open, but sometimes the reader has "to read between the lines" in order to grasp what the narrator is after. The technique that is chosen is also very essential to how we interpret a text. I have made my observations from reading Malouf's book Remembering Babylon and focused on the two passages given to me.

In the first passage we are quickly given details as of what time and place the story takes place. The narrator is an outside multiple narrator, who in a few lines reveals a lot of information about the children and what previous experiences they have had. The girls in the story are described less intimate than the boy, which makes it hard for the reader to know if the girls will develop into important characters of the story or not. The boy whose name is Lachlan Bettie, we receive plenty of information about. We are given direct information concerning his character, his personality, and why he is acting like he does as the story moves on. It is quite clear that he will be an important person.

Even the dog comes alive with help from the narrators voice. Occasionally we are indirectly told that there are other people who are important and have had a great influence on the children. This is shown in different ways the children are thinking and acting. "A black! That was the boy's first thought. We are being raided by blacks. After so many false alarms it had come". We can immediately recognise the sensation of fear of the unknown which has been transmitted from the adults to these children. The narrator takes it for granted that we as readers have experienced similar feelings, even if we are not aware of it. 

When Gemmy finally enters the scene of action he is described with words as, the creature, it, e.g. This makes the reader feel distant to him, but also curious since we can understand that this is an extraordinary event taking place in front of us, which is going to have a big impact on the continuation of the book.

In the second passage, the narrator is concentrating on one character namely that of Gemmy. Gemmy is a multiple character, and described to us as a person with conflicting emotions. He is drawn to civilisation for reasons he is not sure of, or cannot explain. The narrator lets us listen to the interior monologues that takes place within Gemmy. In spite of the fact that Gemmy has been living with the aborigines being a part of their indigenous way of life, he is presented as a complex person with no wish to break from one world to another. "He had no notion of abandoning the tribe, even less of breaking from one world to another. It was a question of covering space between them, or recovering the connection that would put the words back in his mouth, and catch the creature, the spirit or whatever it was, that lived in the dark of him, and came up briefly to torment or tease but could be tempted, he now saw, with what these people ate and with the words they used". The narrator lets us as readers have an advantage beyond the other characters in the story, since we are given such a detailed description of Gemmys thoughts, that hopefully we will be able to read the continuation seeing it and interpret it from different angles of the story.

The narrative teqnices that are used in these two passages shows that the author has a major power in his choice of narrator. Even if the setting is the same, the theme is the same, the people are the same. It is still the author who decides what to focalise on, and in which way he does it, all accordingly to what he wants to accomplish. Another interesting aspect is that the narrator is using the same words to express the feeling of insecurity they all feel at the crucial moment they are facing one another for the first time.

Previously I have not realised the importance of different narrative teqnices. After I read this book and did my close reading, I can see that the narrator works similar to a conductor. When we listen to an orchestra it is the conductor who chooses what to focus on. In spite most readers (audience) do not pay much attention to this, but it is still very important for the overall impression.
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