The Point for Narration

While I am reading Tomcat Murr written by E.T.A. Hoffmann I have never been this confused by any other book I have read before. It is a difficult book to understand because I don’t really understand who is narrating because they change in the middle of sentences. But this is why the book is so intriguing to me because I don’t know if I will ever figure out who really is narrating, why they are doing it this way, or if it will come together in the end of the book. The author continues to switch between narrators Kappellmeister Kreisler and Tomcat Murr (the talking/writing cat). Which is another reason why I don’t understand they book very well, I am unsure if the cat ever talks aloud to where humans can hear it or does it only write and only other animals can hear it? The author might have clarified this already in the book and I just read it wrong or the author might have not stated whether humans can hear it or not allowing the readers to imagine with their own idea to what is going on. This book is written from two different world’s one seeming more like a fantasy and the other more of a biography, but somehow throughout the book the two worlds connect.
This is the only book I have read so far that I don’t know who the narrator is. Knowing who the narrator is a key point for me to understand a book or movie because I like to know who is talking and when they are talking. I have rarely seen movies or books where the readers or viewers don’t know who the narrator is. The narrator is either introduced in the beginning of the movie or is one of the main characters in the story. Narrating is to tell a story, in speech or writing or by means of images.
A question that I think should be brought up is “Why is it that we need to know who is narrating?” The only reason I need to know who is narrating because I like to visualize what is going on and who to picture when they are talking in books. This is even in movies, I like to picture who is talking so I can make some kind of connection with the voice and the face. Even in cartoon movies if all I see is a cartoon as the narrator, for example in the Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer movie the narrator is a cartoon snowman, I understand the movie better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjJCHSAQ0jE
In my personal opinion, if it is fiction or a real person talking it is easier for people to understand the story knowing who the narrator is rather than not knowing who is talking.