# The Narrator (Encantadas) — Short Fiction character guide

> The Narrator (Encantadas) in Short Fiction by Herman Melville.

**Role:** major

**Also known as:** Unknown, the man, this man

**First appearance:** 0003-sketch-first-the-isles-at-large

## Snapshot

A weathered sailor-narrator who wanders the Galapagos and finds in their black, blasted rocks a mirror for human desolation and endurance.

## Who they are

He comes to the Encantadas as a voyager, sketching the islands' cinder landscapes, their tortoises, their castaway histories with the plain authority of a man who has actually been there. His voice moves between naturalist, antiquarian, and moralist, refusing to smooth the ragged edges of fact into fiction's symmetry. What holds the sketches together is his temperament: a melancholy curiosity that treats the islands less as scenery than as evidence about what people do when the world offers them nothing.

## In the story

### [The Encantadas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/chapters/the-encantadas)

The unnamed narrator who describes the islands and recounts the stories of their inhabitants.

### [Sketch First: The Isles at Large](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/chapters/sketch-first-the-isles-at-large)

The narrator describes his memories of the Encantadas and his vivid, almost supernatural impressions of the islands and their tortoises.

### [Sketch Second: Two Sides to a Tortoise](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/chapters/sketch-second-two-sides-to-a-tortoise)

The narrator describes his first encounter with the tortoises, his awe at their ancient appearance, and his later participation in eating them and using their shells.

### [Sketch Third: Rock Rodondo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/chapters/sketch-third-rock-rodondo)

The narrator describes his first visit to Rock Rodondo at dawn, observing the rock's structure and the teeming bird and fish life.

### [Sketch Fourth: A Pisgah View from the Rock](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/chapters/sketch-fourth-a-pisgah-view-from-the-rock)

The narrator guides the reader from the summit of Rock Rodondo, describing the view and recounting the history of the islands.

### [Sketch Seventh: Charles's Isle and the Dog-King](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/chapters/sketch-seventh-charles-s-isle-and-the-dog-king)

The narrator recounts the history of Charles's Isle and the Dog-King, learned from a shipmate, and later describes his own ship's encounter with the island's beacon.

### [Sketch Eighth: Norfolk Isle and the Chola Widow](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/chapters/sketch-eighth-norfolk-isle-and-the-chola-widow)

The first-person narrator who visits Norfolk Isle and helps rescue Hunilla.

### [Sketch Tenth: Runaways, Castaways, Solitaries, Gravestones, etc.](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/chapters/sketch-tenth-runaways-castaways-solitaries-gravestones-etc)

The narrator recounts personal knowledge of a man lost on Narborough Isle who survived by drinking from a seal's wound.

### [Endnotes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/chapters/endnotes)

Referenced in endnotes regarding sources for the Encantadas sketches and Porter's Voyage.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_encantadas
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters