Point of View

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Point of View
7

• Literature Craft Voice
• Nicholas Delbanco and Alan Cheuse

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Point of view refers to the perspectivefrom
which a story is told.

• At the end of Chapter 7 in Literature Craft
  Voice, Nicholas Delbanco and Alan Cheuse outline
  the numerous points of view from which authors
  may tell their story.
• ? First-Person Narrator ? Third-Person
  Narrator
• ? Second-Person Narrator ? Unreliable Narrator
• ? Naïve Narrator ? Omniscient Narrator
• ? Limited Omniscient Narrator ? Objective Point
  of View
• ? Editorial Omniscience ? Impartial Omniscience
• ? Interior Monologue ? Stream of Consciousness

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Point of view is just abouteverything in fiction.

• Consider an event or incident that you have
  witnessed.
• In discussions with other eyewitnesses, did
  versions of the facts differ?
• Did the other eyewitnesses consider themselves
  objective?
• Did their interpretation of the event or incident
  depend on their positioning or their vantage
  point?
• Did their interpretation depend on their past
  experiences and their character?
• In fiction, as in actuality, the story is shaped
  by the authors creation of a narrative voice and
  the positioning of the voice in relation to the
  storys events.

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Point of view is just abouteverything in fiction.

• Two people, like two characters, can relate the
  same incident and characterize the same person in
  entirely different ways with different emphases
  and details, and therefore different conclusions.

When interpreting fiction it is important to
identify the narrative voice.
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Note the importance of point of view not only to
the story Brownies, but also to ZZ Packers
writing process

• I found it very good to begin with that first
  person voice because I felt as though I could
  just tell the story the way I thought that
  Laurel/Snot would. And then I put it in third
  person so that I could see some of my blind
  spots. This particular third person could see
  some things about the rest of the world but might
  not have access to everything that Laurel had
  access to. So then that allowed me to see beyond
  Laurels point of view. So switching the point
  of view for me enabled me to get the voice, which
  I wanted, which was the first person voice, but
  also to get the knowledge and range of
  information that sometimes authors can only get
  when they travel into the third person point of
  view.
• - Z. Z. Packer

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Most Commonly Used Points of View

• First-Person Narrator
• The story is narrated by a character in the story
  
• Identified by use of the pronoun I or the plural
  first-person, we.
• Consider, for example, Updikes A P and
  Faulkners A Rose for Emily.
• Third-Person Omniscient
• A narrator who is outside the story.
• The narrator refers to all the characters in the
  story with the pronouns he, she, or they.
• This narrator observes the thoughts and describes
  the actions of multiple characters in the story
  with all-knowingness and all-access.
• This narrator can reveal the characters inner
  most thoughts and emotions and most secretive
  actions.
• Consider Malamuds The Magic Barrel and Ha
  Jins Saboteur.
• Third-Person Limited Omniscient Narrator
• A third person who enters into the mind of only
  one character at a time.
• This narrator serves more as an interpreter than
  as a source of the main characters thoughts.
• Consider Porters The Jilting of Granny
  Weatherall and Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown.

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Variations

• As previously noted, there are other points of
  view and variations on those just mentioned.
  Consider, for example the following
• The Naïve Narrator
• A narrator, generally unreliable, who is unaware
  of the full complexity of events in the story,
  due to youth, innocence, or cultural awareness.
• Are the narrators naïve in Mahfouzs The
  Conjuror Made Off with the Dish and Ellisons
  Battle Royal?
• The Unreliable Narrator
• A narrator who cannot be trusted to present an
  undistorted account of the action because of
  inexperience, ignorance, personal bias,
  intentional deceptiveness, or even insanity.
• Are the narrators reliable in Poes The Fall of
  the Usher and Weltys Why I Live at the County
  P.O? Are these narrators honest?
• The Editorial Omniscient Narrator
• A narrator who inserts his or her own commentary
  about characters or events into the narrative.
• Consider the narrator of Tolstoys The Death of
  Ivan Ilych.

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In this quotation from John Updike, consider how
a shift in point of view affects the authors
imagination and the writing process

• Once you break with the first person, then you
  do discover the wonderful world of multiple view
  points, and you can fly through space, and go
  from head to head, and you get out and you become
  a character in your own right, you become the
  omniscient author presiding.
• - John Updike

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Point of View in Brownies

• Brownies actually started out in the first
  person point of view, explains Z. Z. Packer,
  and then I changed it to the third person point
  of view, and then I changed it back to the first
  person point of view. The first person can
  oftentimes be the most personal point of view
  that a writer can employ, but its also
  deceptively simple.
• The narrator of Brownies, Laurel but called
  Snot, looks back at a trip to camp when she was
  in the fourth grade and when she and her
  African-American brownie troop were almost
  pressured into a fight with another troop of
  white, mentally disabled campers.
• Packer uses a somewhat common but complex
  perspective. The narrative voice is that of a
  mature woman remembering and depicting her
  awareness and sensibilities as a nine-year old.
• Consider how this perspective shapes the telling
  of the story. How would the story be different if
  it were told by a nine-year old who experienced
  the events only a few weeks or months ago? Would
  the observations be different? Would the
  vocabulary change? Would the tone be different?
  

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Brownies continued

• The slightest shift in point of view has
  significant implications on the telling of the
  story
• Packer, for instance, has her adult narrator
  withhold information from the reader, not to
  simply set up a surprise ending but rather to
  present the consciousness of a child at a pivotal
  event in her life. We are not told, for
  instance, of the disability of the white girls
  until the climax. Until then, the reader and the
  narrator only see them from afar, and we are
  never within their orbit enough to see whether
  their faces were the way all white girls appeared
  on TV.
• As a result, the reader can more fully experience
  the dramatic impact this experience had on the
  narrator, as Laurel begins to consider the
  complexity of life, specifically racial
  relations, her fathers bitterness, authority and
  submission, and her own humanity.
• Other stories in Literature Craft Voice use
  this same perspective. Compare Packers use of
  this technique with that of Alice Munros in An
  Ounce of Cure, Amy Tans in Two Kinds, and
  James Joyces in Araby.

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Point of View in The Short Happy Lifeof Francis
Macomber

• Ernest Hemingway makes judicious use of the
  third-person limited omniscient point of view in
  The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. We
  can argue that the storys power results from his
  crafty use of this perspective.
• Hemingway looks mostly into the consciousness of
  Robert Wilson. His unspoken thoughts on American
  men and women, for instance, and his seemingly
  endless calculating make him a fascinating
  figure. Throughout the story, we watch Wilson
  restrain himself in conversation.
• Hemingway also peers into the consciousness of
  Macomber, so the reader can watch his profound
  transformation take shape and reveal itself.
  Consider his thoughts and actions just before the
  lion hunt his nervousness during the preceding
  night as the lion roars, and his nervousness the
  next morning and while hunting. Then, note his
  thoughts and actions after he shoots the buffalo
  his drunken elation, that in his life he had
  never felt so good, that for the first time in
  his life he had a feeling of definite elation,
  that he felt a wild unreasonable happiness that
  he had never known before, and his new wealth.

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Macomber continued

• Hemingway even tells us what the lion is thinking
  during the hunt, which establishes sympathy for
  the animal and complicates notions of courage.
• However, he examines Margots inner works to a
  far lesser extent than the other principal
  characters revealing her fear of her husbands
  change but not exposing her reason for firing the
  gun or her thoughts at the end of the story.
• Through the use of point of view, Hemingway
  creates a story with action as dramatic
  internally as externally and gives us an ending
  with a question and no definitive answer Did
  Margot shoot her husband intentionally?

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Point of View in How to Become a Writer Or, Have
You Earned This Cliché

• Lorrie Moores How to Become a Writer is about
  the development of a young girl into a writer.
  In a way, the narrator writes a kind of advice or
  how-to manual drawing from her own experiences.
  Like a how-to manual, she uses the
  second-person point of view.
• The use of a second-person point of view is rare
  in fiction. Here, it fits the unusual form and
  content of the story and underscores its theme
  and the narrators quest to establish a unique
  fictional voice.
• Moore makes use of non-traditional presentations
  of plots and finds some humor in what might be
  called literary pretensions. She develops humor
  through sentence rhythms, language, tone, and
  self-deprecation.
• The conflict might be defined as the narrator
  against what seems like a continued unsympathetic
  and unaccepting readership, beginning with her
  mother, high school teacher, college professor,
  classmates, and so on, and her fight against
  literary conventions. Her decision to write in
  the second person helps establish her commitment
  to struggle against conventional expectations.
  She has dedicated herself to becoming a writer
  and to tolerating discouragement

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Hemingways Response to the Question

• Hemingway was asked the question several times
  and provided contradictory answers Francis
  wife hates him because hes a coward. But when
  he gets his guts back, she fears him so much she
  has to kill him shoots him in the back of the
  head.
• But, another time, he said,No, I dont know
  whether she shot him on purpose any more than you
  do. I could find out if I asked myself because I
  invented it and I could go right on inventing.
  But you have to know where to stop.
• This is one of those times when we must trust the
  tale and our interpretation of the tale, not the
  teller.

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Point of View in The Yellow Wallpaper

• The Yellow Wallpaper is written from the
  perspective of a first-person narrator. However,
  is the narrator reliable?
• Not all of the narrators conclusions seem
  accurate. For instance, she says that the home
  used to be a colonial mansion and her room a
  nursery. Yet there are walls and gates that
  lock and separate little houses, and her room
  has iron window bars, wall rings, a bed
  permanently attached to the floor, and gnawed
  bedposts. It sounds more like a former
  institution for the psychologically ill. Of
  course, too, we can question the narrators
  certainty about the woman behind the yellow
  wallpaper and the group of women creeping around
  the garden.
• If we agree that the narrator is unreliable, does
  this mean that she is dishonest?
• Although the narrator may lie to her husband
  about writing, overall, we will agree that she is
  honest. However, she is emotionally unbalanced,
  which makes her unreliable.

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How to Become a Writer continued

• Above all, the narrator values originality and a
  unique voice. She opens her imagination and lets
  out what might be if not meaningful at least
  creative situations and unusual plots. Very
  importantly, she realizes that writers are
  merely open, helpless texts with no real
  understanding of what they have written. This
  realization helps her retain her uniqueness. She
  does not try to analyze her stories and then
  rewrite them in more conventional ways at the
  expense of originality.
• Her originality is revealed in, among other
  elements, her deadpan tone (which can be
  humorous, facetious, cynical, sarcastic, and
  frustrated), her comically bizarre storylines,
  and the use of the second-person narrative voice.
  
• To an extent, the story is a satire on writing
  classes, writing instructors, and audiences, all
  of whom, Moore says, might praise an original
  voice in Melville but discourage an original
  voice in a young writer.
• Compare the style of Moores how-to manual with
  that of the narrators in Junot Diazs How to
  Date a Browngirl, Backgirl, Whitegirl, or
  Halfie.

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Yellow Wallpaper continued

• But what has driven her into a state of neurosis
  or even psychosis? This question is crucial to
  understanding the story. When we consider her
  life, we realize that she has never been
  permitted to explore her identity and be herself.
  As a wife in the late nineteenth century,
  particularly a wife of a physician, she was
  expected to fulfill certain obligations, which
  are derived from her husband and his profession.
  However, these obligations have left her
  unfulfilled and empty.

• The narrators life is very much like the yellow
  wallpaper in her room. The wallpaper, like her
  life, is deteriorating from lack of attention.
  Furthermore, the pattern of her life has been as
  vague and disconnected as the pattern in the
  design of the wallpaper. She promises to follow
  that pointless pattern to some sort of a
  conclusion. The woman she sees behind the
  wallpaper represents an image of herself. Like
  the woman, the narrator is trapped behind a
  pattern or way of life that someone else (a
  husband, a culture) has designed for her. Her
  deepest self and individuality yearn for
  expression and freedom.

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Yellow Wallpaper continued

• Compare for reliability the narrator in The
  Yellow Wallpaper and the narrators of Poes The
  Fall of the House of Usher and Weltys Why I
  Live at the County P.O? Are Poes and Weltys
  narrators also unreliable but honest?
• Are they unreliable for different reasons?

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For Further Consideration

• Explain how point of view can be used to add
  suspense and ambiguity in Brownies, The Short
  Happy Life of Francis Macomber, and The Yellow
  Wallpaper.
• Explain how Brownies, How to Become a Writer,
  and The Yellow Wallpaper are stories about
  writing. What do they tell us about the birth or
  development of a writer? What do they say about
  the importance of writing to the author?
• Rewrite an excerpt from one of these stories in a
  different point of view. You might, for example,
  write Brownies from Daphnes perspective,
  Francis Macomber from Margots, the husbands
  in Yellow Wallpaper, and How to Become a
  Writer from he third person.