Narration main character

As I mentioned in other chapters, Proust was a fascinating writer, best known for his seven-volume work. In Search of Lost Time (older English translations have used the title Remembrance of Things Past). The novel draws heavily on the Proust s own life and experiences, but he made sure that the main character also had experiences that Proust never had. Most of the book s characters were metaphors for actual people he had encountered in real life, and the characters often combine traits of several different friends or lovers. The closeness of the novel to his life is revealed on two occasions near the end of the novel, when he mentions that Marcel is the first name of the narrator. 

Several of the previously mentioned docudramas use narrators. It is by no means mandatory that there be a narrator however, the device, borrowed from documentary, is commonly used in docudrama. Very often that narrator assumes the journalistic role of reporter, and so the structure proceeds as a piece of reportage (Culloden). Another approach to the narrator is to use a diarist. In Loach s Land and Freedom, the letters of the main character document the story. 

This differs from the playwright s approach to a real life event, such as the Battle of Gallipoli. David Williamson s treatment of events in the Peter Weir film Gallipoli is very dramatic, and we do enter the story through the experience of two main characters. The treatment, however, is very different from the narrator approach earlier described for the docudrama. 

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