Chapter 6-Point of view

Point of view refers to who is telling the story, who is the narrator.  Be sure not to confuse the narrator with the author!  The narrator is a construction of the author, just as the characters in the book are.  The identity of the narrator is one of the strongest influences on how we see the story. Sometimes the narrator is named, sometimes they are not named.  The identity of the narrator can change everything about a story!

Imagine if Sherlock Holmes narrated his own stories rather than Watson. The stories would be different in almost every way.  Imagine if we were to see The Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the Wicked Witch rather than from a narrator who preferred Dorothy. We might see a story where the Witch has justification for everything she does and Dorothy is just an interfering trespasser.  If we had been seeing the Harry Potter stories through the eyes of Snape, the whole shape of the series would have been different.  Narrators matter!

The most common types of narrators are

• Third-person omniscient
• Third-person limited
• First person

The third-person omniscient narrator is the most common type of narrator. A third-person narrator is not a part of the story, not a character in the story. “Omniscient” means “all-knowing.”  This type of narrator knows everything that is going on from the action of every character no matter where they are to what they are thinking.  Omniscient narrators are everywhere and see everything, and even have the ability to go back and forth in time.

The third-person limited narrator is a narrator who is outside the story but can only see from one character’s point of view.  He can only relate the thoughts of that one character and only sees the action that one character sees.  We know that character’s thoughts on everyone and everything, but we don’t know the thoughts of anyone else on him.

The third-person editorial narrator is much like the omniscient narrator, but chooses to make commentary on the story as it plays out.  The editorial narrator may tell you something is bad, or that a person is a villain or may foreshadow events.  They are outside the story, but comment on the story.  This is not common, but I think it’s quite interesting when you find a narrator like this.

A neutral third-person narrator just tells the story with no comment and lets you make all your own decisions about it.

A first-person narrator is a character in the story, telling it to you as it happens. Because we are hearing from a character, we are limited to what that character sees and feels.  They are telling us directly.  This is Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby.  It’s as if the character is speaking directly to the reader as they would tell their story to someone who was with them.  It can be a major character or a minor character. One of the issues to remember with this type of narrator is that they will only tell you what they choose to tell you.  They could be keeping secrets from you or distorting facts.  A first-person narrator cannot assumed to be truthful or reliable, though they may be both.  Just don’t assume that they are.  Some famous unreliable narrators in literature are

• Dr. James Sheppard in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. He is a medical doctor and the narrator so people are inclined to believe him.  However, not to give any spoilers, let’s just say that he isn’t what he seems to be and the plot twist is dramatic because of it.
• Black Hawk in Black Hawk Speaks. Black Hawk is giving his justification for the Black Hawk wars. When we know someone has an agenda behind their words, we must read them with a thought towards whether they are biased or unbiased.
• Pi in Life of Pi. Pi ends up telling his rescuers two different stories, one of which seems impossible and the other more possible.  However, the book leads us to believe the more impossible story is true.  We are left having to make our own decision.

First-person narrators can also be less than truthful, not out of trying to be deceptive, but because they are naive.  Maybe they are young, inexperienced, or have diminished mental capacities.  Examples of this are

• Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird  She’s just too young to fully understand the implications and complications of what is going on around her.
• Huckleberry Finn in Huckleberry Finn. He displays some wisdom and “common sense” in the book, but, again, is too young to understand the full situation regarding Jim’s status as a runaway slave.

One other type of narration that became popular during the late Victorian era and bloomed during the Modernist era between WWI and WWII is stream of consciousness. In this style of narration, we hear the thoughts of the character just as they pass through their head.  It isn’t composed as dialogue, but is, as the name says, a stream of thoughts.

“What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had

burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the
early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did,
standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off
them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the vegetables?”—was that it?—”I prefer
men to cauliflowers”—was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace—Peter Walsh. He
would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one re-
membered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished—how strange it was!—a
few sayings like this about cabbages.

(Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf)

Authors use various ways of expressing thoughts

Direct Discourse: She thought, “I will stay here tomorrow.”

Indirect Discourse: She thought she would stay there the next day.

Free Indirect Discourse: She would stay here tomorrow.

Authors can create the narration in many different ways and it’s always a deliberate choice on their part to elicit a particular response for the reader, so it’s worth noting who is narrating and how.