Different kind of voice in same point of view

Booth insisted in his article "Types of Narration" that we need to get a richer tabulation of the forms the author’s voice can take. In addition, even though novels use same point of view, those can’t be grouped together and defined by the one simple term. To test how case by case differ when they have the same point of view, I brought two novels. The first one is "the Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess and the other one is "In Search of America" by Nathan Asch.

“ ‘What’s it going to be then, eh?’ There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no license for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko…” (Clockwork Orange, Ch1)

Clockwork orange was narrated by Tim, very self conscious and violent boy. He uses the dialect even most English users don’t understand. This sounds weird, first, because you never heard, but he continues to use. However, as you read further, see those words repeatedly, you may figure out naturally what those words mean? He uses specific names of people, places and objects. By using his-own word, readers might be more curious and feel difference between narrator and them. Here, you might wonder what “Korova Milkbar” is and what is “mestos.” Burgess used the words to make people ask deliberately. At the same time, it tends to produce grotesque and terrific mood. Tim is telling through this novel how it was by his strong impression.

“I walked along the street in Texarkana, Texas, where Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas almost make a corner, and I wondered how I could get to live a week with a sharecropper family. I had crossed Arkansas and come here because I wanted to see the most isolated, the deepest cotton country, untouched by the world and not knowing the outside world.” (In Search of America, part of the beginning)

Compared to "Clockwork Orange", Asch’s novel is less self-conscious, because he less dramatized and shows less of his own thought and view. Of course, he uses the name of the place and what he is doing like what Tim was doing. But the intensity of impression is low after reading "Clockwork Orange". Therefore, the narrator’s own voice sounds pretty much reliable to the fact narrators observed. He depicts poor people by using formal words and publicly known place with using controlled tone. He concentrates on the truth more than a person’s impression.

After comparing the two novels’ beginnings, we found the level of impression is different and it is affected by the narrator’s character and reliability. It is not that Tim’s voice is unreliable, but the level of reliability is different. So when we say one narrator’s voice is reliable and credited; we should care to find out how it is reliable and what makes it reliable.