5TH MEETING

Point Of View
By WILLIAM KENNEY
Definition
 The perspective from which a story is
narrated. Every story has a perspective,
though there can be more than one type of
point of view in a work of literature. The
most common points of view used in
novels are first person singular (“I”) and
third person (“he” and “she”). However,
there are many variants on these two types
of point of view.
 Point of view Based on person
1. First Person Point Of View:

First person is used when the main character is telling the story. This is
the kind that uses the "I" narrator. As a reader, you can only experience
the story through this person's eyes. So you won't know anything about
the people or events that this character hasn't personally experienced.

2. Second Person Point Of View:

Second person point of view is generally only used in instructional

writing. It is told from the perspective of "you".
3. Third Person Point Of View:

Third person Point Of View is used when your narrator is not a character
in the story. Third person uses the "he/she/it" narrator and it is the most
commonly used Point Of View in writing.
The Omniscient Narrator
The author who choose the exploit his Godlike
knowledge of the fictional universe he has created will
employe the omniscient narrator.
1. The Advantages of omniscience : omniscient narration is
the most natural of a narrative techniques. After all, the
author is with regard to his work omniscient.
2. The Disadvantages of omniscience : Although
Omniscient narration is, in one sense of particularly natural
technique it is another sense an especially unnatural one.
 Limited Narration
The Alternative to the omniscient narrator is the limited
narrator. As has been implied, limited narration is always artificial
since there are in truth no limits to an author’s knowledge of his
own creation.

1. The narrator
The Limited Narrator is, simply, a narrator who doesn’t know
everything. He may appear both in stories told from inside (first-
person narration) and in stories told from the outside (third-
person narration). It is when we turn to limited narrator that the
matter of point of view begins to take on major importance.
a. Protagonist as Narrator
The use of the protagonist as narrator has certain
obvious advantages. It corresponds very closely
to the reader’s experience of life. For each of us is
the protagonist in a first-person story.
The use of the protagonist as narrator, telling his
own stories in the first person, has the advantages
of immediacy and the sense of life
b. Protagonist as Viewpoint Character
The view point character may be the protagonist, in
which case this method is very close to the first-person
technique as we discussed before.
The principal difference is that in the first-person
technique narrator and protagonist are one and the same,
while in the third-person technique they remain clearly
distinguished.
this difference has important implications. The narrator
in a third-person limited story is always more or les
detached from the viewpoint character. This detachment
present an opportunity for kinds of irony, evaluation,
interpretation not possible in first-person narration.
C. Minor Character Viewpoint

Minor character viewpoint obviously has many of the same

advantages and disadvantages as major character viewpoint,
whether firs-person or third-person limited. There is the
additional problem that telling the story from the point of
view of a minor character requires a special sort of
justification.
d. Objective Viewpoint

An external instance of limited narration occurs when the

narrator is not permitted to know directly the though of any of
the characters. This technique is something referred to as the
objective viewpoint ( some critics prefer the term dramatic). A
striking instance of the objective viewpoint maintained with
unusual rigor throughout an entire story is Ernest
Hemingway’s The Killers ; Hemingway is in general a master
of the objective viewpoint.
e. Combinations

Now these different points of view may appear in combination in

the same story. In fact, a work of fiction that is as a whole an
example of omniscient narration will usually include all or most of
the other points of view as well. That is, at some point in his
narrative, the omniscient narrator will simply describe externals and
will therefore be assuming the objective view point. At another
moment, the narrator will present a scene to us from the point of
view of one of the characters and will therefore employ third-
person limited narration.
f. Multiple Viewpoints
A variation on the use of multiple viewpoints
is the so-called epistolary novel, the novel made
up entirely of letters written by the characters.
Samuel Richardson’s Clarissia Harlowe and
Tobias Smollett’s Humphrey Clinker are two of
the greatest English epistolary novels.
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