Point of View Narration

Overview ► Do you read without questioning a text or the author’s viewpoint? ► Do you look at the author’s purpose, examine viewpoints, or recognize gaps in the text? ► Remember to consider different viewpoints when reading.

Point of View ► Stories are not reflections of reality but are selective versions of it, told from a particular view. ► The author positions the reader to respond to a story in a particular way through the use of language, point of view, etc..

Passages ► Read “The House” and think about it from the point of view of the role that you have been given at the bottom of your paper. Do not divulge your role to anyone else.

The Story of the Three Little Pigs ► What prior knowledge to you have about the story of the three little pigs? ► Read the two different versions of The Three Little Pigs ► Which point of view is correct? ► What are some things that happen in both stories? What are some differences? ► How would other fairy tales change if told from another point of view?

Narration ► Refers to the act of telling a story, whether in prose or in verse, and the means by which that telling is accomplished. ► The Narrator is the one who tells the story. ► The narrator’s identity is different from the author because the narrator is, in some sense, the author’s invention.

Examples ► In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the narrator is a barely literate teenage boy, most unlike Mark Twain. ► However, in The Great Gatsby, the earnest moralist Nick Carraway may have some similarities to F. Scott Fitzgerald. ► What about The Kite Runner?

First Person P.O.V. ► Immediate and direct ► Creates engagement with the reader because the narrator has experienced the event first hand. ► First person can impose limitations on the teller because the narrator can relate only what he or she might have witnessed. ► There too the narrator’s degree of understanding and objectivity must come into question.

First Person ► These narrators can be unreliable and / or naïve who color or distort matters in ways that the reader may or may not detect.

Example ► Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present. When we got back from church, I went into the kitchen of the manor-house, where Mary was cooking the dinner, and John cleaning the knives, and I said – “Mary, I have been married to Mr. Rochester this morning.” Bronte’s Jane Eyre

Third Person P.O.V. ► Narrator has a much broader view and usually an objective perspective on characters and events.

Omniscient Third Person ► Narrator can enter the consciousness of any character, evaluate motives and feelings, and recount the background and predict the outcome of situations.

Limited Example ► She thought of the old invalid gentleman to whom she read the newspaper four afternoons a week while he slept in the garden. She had got quite used to the frail head on the cotton pillow, the hollowed eyes, the open mouth and the high pinched nose. If he’d been dead she mightn’t have noticed for weeks; she wouldn’t have minded.Mansfield’s “Miss Brill”

Omniscient Example ► The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted... Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage

Limited Third Person ► Narrator describes events only from the perspective and with the understanding of one, or sometimes, a select few characters.

Second Person P.O.V. ► Narrator addresses the audience directly using the pronoun “you.” ► Assumes the audience is experiencing events along with the narrator. ► This P.O.V. is rare

Second Person Example ► Monday arrives on schedule. You sleep through the first ten hours. God only knows what happened to Sunday. McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City

The Kite Runner ► We discussed Amir as a narrator yesterday. ► Why do you so closely associate Hosseini with Amir? ► Find examples in the text where Amir is proves that he is indeed telling the full truth of the story.

Information taken from... ► The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms ► Essential Literary Terms