The Judgment of the Omniscient Narrator to Disguise Its Bias in Uncle Tom’s Cabin Claudia Excaret Santos Campusano College

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, presents the linked stories of different slaves in Kentucky from the perspective of an omniscient narrator. “The role of the omniscient narrator is to chronicle the events of a story in an impartial way. He or she has full access to the events and dialogue occurring in the narrative, rendering his or her account the most complete and accurate. This all-knowing, all-seeing narrator type jumps from scene to scene, following characters throughout a story and assessing the progress of the narrative.” The narrator shows the feelings of the characters; however, it does not do it from an impartial position; it transmits his opinion, and it judges each character and makes statements about their personalities. However, the narrator states negative things about most characters, even the ones it seems to like, making it appear as if it had no preferences, making it appear fair. The narrator is telling the story while judging the character and showing his opinion, and by doing this, it guides the opinion of the reader. It is a bias narration disguised by the apparent fair judgement of most characters, which guides the opinion of the reader instead of allowing it to make his own.

The opinions of...