Hey, this is Mr. Sato, here to explain point-of-view.
Narrative point-of-view, or POV, is simply
the perspective from which the story is told.
In other words, who is telling the story?
There are two basic kinds of POV: first-person and third-person.
And within those two kinds
are a few variations. So, we'll talk about five different kinds altogether.
First-person narration is when a character in a story is narrating it. So, if a character
in the story is telling you what's going on— "I did this," "he said to me," and "he
shook my hand"—then it's a first-person narrator. It's first-person POV.
An advantage of first-person is that it most closely resembles
the way stories are told in everyday life. Right?
You come to school and you tell your friend about something that
happened to you. That's like first-person POV. Another advantage is,
you get a strong sense of the narrating character's
personality, so using first-person point-of-view is also
a way of fully developing that character.
Now, a first-person narrator can be reliable or unreliable. A reliable narrator
is telling us what's happening in a way
that we believe is true and undistorted. (Most first-person
narrators are reliable.) When Pip in Great Expectations tells us his story, we believe
that he's telling us things pretty much the same way we'd see them.
He, naturally, has things he doesn't see
or doesn't know, like what another character is thinking,
but what he does see, he sees without distortion.
An unreliable narrator is one who can't be relied on to tell us the truth the way we'd
see it. It could be the character is immature or intellectually undeveloped,
like the developmentally delayed character, Charlie,
in Flowers for Algernon. In that book, Charlie describes
people he thinks are his friends, but we can see that they're just making fun of
him and having a laugh at his expense. So he's an unreliable first-person narrator.
He's not lying to us, but he isn't able to give us the whole picture.
If the narrator is lying to us, that's also an unreliable narrator.
A well-known example is "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe.
Our narrator starts out telling us not to
think that he's mad (mad, mad! I say), and sets out to prove to the reader
how sane he is,
but before you're halfway into the story, it's clear that this guy is off his rocker.
So first-person narrators can be fun that way.
Another fun trick is to tell the story with alternating first-person narration. You've
probably seen books like this, like Ally Condie's Reached. One chapter
is told from one character's POV.
The next chapter is told from someone else's. That way you get to see the story
from multiple perspectives. That can be tricky too, but it's a great way
to get all the benefits of first-person narration
while still giving your reader a more complex perspective
on the story's events.
One last note on first-person point-of-view: the narrator is usually
the main character, though sometimes it's an important character
who is witnessing what happens to the main character.
Like Sherlock Holmes' assistant, Dr. Watson, tells the story of Sherlock's
investigations, but you'd never say Watson was the main character, right?
Sherlock Holmes is the main character,
even though Watson narrates.
Traditionally, most stories used to be third person POV. This is when the narrator is a
voice outside the story. The narrator tells us that "Doris did this,"
"He said to Doris," or "She shook his hand." That's third person.
The three main kinds of third-person POV are omniscient, limited, and objective.
"Omni" means "all" and "scientia" means "knowledge."
So, an omniscient narrator literally knows everything
about what's going on in the story.
(chainsaw sound effect)
He or she can know what a character is thinking,
or what all the characters are thinking—or even what an inanimate object feels—
if that's what the writer wants. The omniscient narrator can know that
Bob hid something in a room when there's no other character
around to see him do it. This kind of narrator can even know
what will happen to the characters in the future, if the writer so chooses. It's
like the voice of an all-knowing God floating over the action,
leading you through the narrative.
The writer, after all, is like the God of his or her fictional universe.
So, naturally, the third-person narrator is often thought to be the voice of the writer.
But this isn't necessarily so, not all the time.
If an author writes that her character did something,
you shouldn't assume it's the author speaking to you. It's just the voice
of the narrator. That's why when we write about literature, we don't say, the author
says this or that, we say the narrator says it. This is important, because a narrator
can suggest things that the author himself doesn't believe,
or not know something that the author does know.
And that leads us to the limited third-person POV. This is a character
outside the story too, but this one only knows
what the main character thinks and knows. If the character
doesn't know who's hiding around the corner, then the narrator doesn't either.
This can be really useful, like in the short story, "The Sniper" by Liam O'Flaherty,
when we are meant to be surprised
by the identity of the second sniper. eWe learn who it is only when
the main character does. If we'd known all along whom it was, it would be a
very different, and less interesting, story.
Even more limited is the objective POV. This is when the third person
narrator describes what's happening, but doesn't know what anyone is thinking,
not even the main character.
It's like a video camera that records the events, but only sees the factual surface
of the events and lets you, the reader, infer what's going on
beneath the surface, like you would do in real life. A well-known example of this
is Ernest Hemingway's story, "Hills Like White Elephants."
The narrator tells us what the characters say, but doesn't explain
what they're talking about. It doesn't say what the relationship is
between the characters or what kind of operation
the woman is going to have because it only knows what can be
observed with the five senses. The objective point-of-view allows
no opinions from the narrator or insights into why
characters do what they do. Figuring that stuff out is the
reader's job, like it is in real life.
Now, you may be wondering: if there's a first-person and a third-person,
then why isn't there a second person?
That's an intelligent question.
There actually is a rarely used second-person POV. It's when
YOU are the main character, like in Jay McInerney's
novel, Bright Lights, Big City, where the narrator says things like,
"You get in your car and start the engine. You drive down the highway
thinking about your ex-girlfriend. A car cuts you off in traffic."
This is really hard to do well and I generally don't recommend it.
Most of the time, when I read second-person POV, I keep thinking:
"No, I didn't. Don't tell me I said that. That's not my girlfriend."
It can be very distracting. So— attempt it at your own risk.
So, to review: the main kinds of point-of-view are 1) reliable first-person,
in which a character in the story tells you the story in a reliable way;
2) unreliable first-person, in which
you have a character in the story telling it to you with distortion of some kind;
3) omniscient third person, that's the all-knowing God-like narrator;
4) limited third-person in which we see the story
through a third-person narrator who only knows
what the main character knows;
and 5) objective third person, where the narrator just describes things like a
hidden camera would, without commentary, and lets
the reader put the pieces together.
If you're writing the story, the important thing about POV is to figure out
who can best tell your story, then to be consistent. It's a common error
for new fiction writers to sort of drift from one POV to another
whenever it's convenient.
Skilled writers can switch up the POV like this sometimes,
but they don't do it accidentally. They do it to achieve
a specific effect. But that's a pretty advanced technique.
If you're studying a narrative written by someone else,
try to keep in mind who's telling it to you, and what the limitations
and advantages of that POV are.
And one last thing: understanding narrative POV is a valuable
critical thinking skill, incredibly useful in real life.
For example, when an advertiser tells you that its product is great,
or when a politician tells you the country is on the wrong track, it's important
to remember who is telling you this and what that person's motives might be.
Or when a friend tells you someone said something,
you might want to ask yourself how he or she
knows this, or what the limitations of that person's knowledge are.
And when you have to put together a complete picture
from incomplete information, you'll have had practice doing this from
reading literature.
Understanding point-of-view means seeing the whole picture,
and not just passively accepting a narrative the way it's told to you,
and that's important stuff.
All right, good luck with your assignment!