: Re: Is it bad style if the personal first person narrator of a story dies during said story? Right now I'm writing a novel in which I use the changing perspectives of two main characters with

@Moriarity138

Sometimes first-person POV is conceptualized as a story being told, by the character, to someone. Many first-person narratives are framed as diaries, or stories being recounted later, or something along those lines. If this is how you are presenting your narrative, you'll want to respect that, which means that the narrative (of that character) will need to be completed prior to the final scene in which the character appears.

With that said, not every first-person narrative is framed this way. Sometimes the reader is just a disembodied entity floating along inside the narrator's consciousness. This is a bit less realist --but all art is artifice anyway. In this second case, you just carry through the narrative to the last moments, and close it when the narrator dies.

Many narratives are ambiguous --we tend to assume the first case unless we are forced into the second interpretation. If that happens, and the story is strong enough, I think the reader will be forgiving. I can think of two examples I've encountered: In Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh, the book closes with the narrator's death --you briefly question how it is you've accessed his narrative, but given it happens at the very end of the story, it's easy to overlook. (He's a bit of a hybrid narrator anyway, since he serves in portions of the book like a third-person omniscient narrator for events he hasn't personally witnessed.) Similarly, the film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is based on the main character's autobiography, but extends beyond it long enough to depict his death. Again there's a brief moment of disorientation, but as it comes at the end, it's something that can be accepted relatively easily.

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