point of view from whose perspective...?. 1st person pov i me my we our

POINT of VIEW

From whose perspective...?

1st Person POV

I Me

My We

Our

First person Narrator

• Uses “I”

• Story is told from a main character’s POV


Benefits: • Readers see events from the

perspective of an important

character

• Readers often

understand the main

character better


Disadvantage: • The narrator may be

unreliable—insane, naïve,

deceptive, narrow minded

etc...

• Readers see only one

perspective

“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but it ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain and he told the truth, mainly. There was things he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another...”

--Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens),

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1881)


2nd Person POV

YouYoursYourYourself

• A second-person POV is rare

• Uses “you” and presents commands

2nd Person POV

Often the narrator is speaking to him/herself

2nd Person POV

You are not the kind of guy who would be a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy.

You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might come clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder.

Then again, it might not.

--Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

2nd Person POV

3rd Person POV

Omniscient Limited

Omniscient

All knowing…the narrator can see into the minds of all characters

Omniscient: • godlike narrator; • can enter character's

minds • knows everything that is

going on, past, present, and future.

• May be a narrator outside the text

3rd Person POV: Omniscient

Advantage: • very natural

technique• author is, after all,

omniscient regarding his work.


Disadvantage:• not lifelike;

• narrator knows and tells all;

• is truly a convention of literature and can feel artificial


A poor man had twelve children and worked

night and day just to get enough bread for

them to eat.

Now when the thirteenth came into the world,

he did not know what to do and in his

misery ran out onto the great highway to

ask the first person he met to be godfather.

The first to come along was God, and he

already knew what it was that weighed on

the man’s mind and said, “Poor man, I pity

you. I will hold your child at the font and I

will look after it and make it happy upon

earth.”

--Jakob & Wilhelm Grimm, “Godfather Death”

(1812)


Limited Omniscient

Narrator can see into ONE character’s mind.

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All characters have thought privacy except ONE.

3rd Person POV: Limited Omniscient

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Gives the impression that we are very close to the mind of that ONE character, though viewing it from a distance.


Sometimes this narrator can be too focused or may impose his/her own opinions with no grounds.


Although she had been around them her whole life, it was when she reached thirty-five that holding babies seemed to make her nervous.

“Andrienne, would you like to hold the baby? Would you mind?”

Always these words from a woman her age looking kind and beseeching--and Andrienne would force herself to breathe deep.

--Lorrie Moore, “Terrific Mother” (1992)



Narrator is: Intrusive Objective

An omniscient narrator who offers philosophical or moral commentary on the characters and the events he depicts

3rd Person POV: Intrusive

William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848)

There is little doubt that old Osborne believed all eh said, and that the girls were quite earnest in their protestations of affection for Miss Swartz. People in Vanity Fair fasten on to rich folks quite naturally. If the simplest people are disposed to look not a little kindly on great Prosperity… if the simple look benevolently on money, how much more do your old worldlings regard it! Their affections rush out to meet and welcome money.

3rd Person POV: Objective

Narrator only describes and does not enter characters’ thoughts.

Like a video camera, the narrator reports what happens and what the characters are saying.


The narrator adds no comment about how the characters are feeling.


The narrator offers no comment on the mood of the setting—no mention of awkwardness, ease, tension etc...


”You should have killed yourself last week," he said to the deaf man.

The old man motioned with his finger. "A little more," he said.

The waiter poured on into the glass so that the brandy slopped over and ran down the stem into the top saucer of the pile.

"Thank you," the old man said. The waiter took the bottle back inside the cafe. He sat down at the table with his colleague again.

"He's drunk now," he said.

"He's drunk every night."

"What did he want to kill himself for?"

"How should I know."

"How did he do it?"

"He hung himself with a rope."

"Who cut him down?"

"His niece."

"Why did they do it?"

"Fear for his soul."

“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway


3rd Person POV: Limited- Stream of Consciousness

An extreme form of the third-person

limited point of view which is used to

replicate the thought process of a

character, with little or no intervention by

the narrator

James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922)

… Rover cycleshop. Those races are on today. How long ago is that? Year Phil Gilligan died. We were in Lombard street west. Wait, was in Thom’s. Got the job in Wisdom Hely’s year we married. Six years. Ten years ago: ninety-four he died, yes that’s right the big fire at Arnott’s. Vall Dillon was lord mayor. The Glencree dinner.

Point of View

1st 2nd 3rd

Omniscient

IntrusiveObjective

Limited

Stream of Consciousness

Or Not

POINT of VIEW

Who is telling the story? End of presentation.

point of view from whose perspective...?. 1st person pov i me my we our

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