I’m trying to come up with a list of what I’m belaboringly calling “deuteragonistic narrators”—i.e., first-person narrators who are not the protagonists in their own stories.
Some classic examples:
- Nick in The Great Gatsby
- Jim in My Ántonia
- “we” in “A Rose for Emily”
And that’s all I can come up with. Sorta-kinda DNs can be found in Heart of Darkness, A Good Soldier, and Lolita, though whether all those narrators aren’t pretty much the protagonists of those novels is I think up for debate.
There has to be more. (There have to be more?) Can you help?