What a Point of View Can and Cannot Do
IntroducedEvery point of view has a limit
- Point of view contributes to what narrators can and cannot provide, based on their level of involvement and intimacy with the details, events and characters.
- So the useful question is not "which type is it?" but "what is unavailable here?"
- What a narration cannot reach is where its meaning usually is.
An all-knowing narrator may know every character’s thoughts; a first-person narrator can know surprisingly little about their own.
The most useful question about point of view is...
What a narration cannot reach is where its meaning usually is.
First-person narrators are inside
- First-person narrators are involved in the narrative.
- Their relationship to the events and the other characters shapes their perspective.
- Narrators may also be characters, and that role influences everything they report.
A first-person narrator's relationship to the other characters shapes their perspective.
They are involved in the narrative, so the relationship is part of the reporting.
Third-person narrators are outside observers
- Third-person narrators are outside observers.
- Their knowledge ranges from observational to all-knowing, and that range shapes their perspective.
- Their outside perspective may not be affected by the events — a detachment worth noticing when the events are terrible.
What does this point of view make unavailable?
Sort each narration by what the reader cannot reach.
Select all the CED's statements about third-person narrators.
It is first-person narrators who may also be characters.
Point of view governs what a narrator can provide, based on their level of ____ and intimacy.
Involvement and intimacy with the details, events and characters.
Naming the point of view is not explaining its function. "It is first-person" is identification. The function is what that position makes unavailable — a first-person narrator cannot report what another character thinks, so everything the reader believes about that character has passed through one interested pair of eyes.
Range is a spectrum, not two boxes
- Observational third-person reports only what could be seen or heard.
- All-knowing third-person enters any mind at will.
- Most narration sits between, and where it sits — whose mind it enters, whose it does not — is the analysable choice.
Match each narration to what the reader is denied.
Naming the denial is the function; naming the type is only identification.
A point-of-view pass
- Name the person. Name whose thoughts are accessible and whose are not.
- Ask whether the narrator is affected by what they report.
- Then say what the reader is therefore denied — that denial is the function.
A third-person narrator enters the mother's thoughts throughout, and never once the daughter's. The reader therefore knows the mother's reasons and only the daughter's behaviour — so the daughter seems unreasonable, and the story's final turn is the reader discovering that this was a choice of access, not a fact about her.
Point of view governs what a narrator can and cannot provide, by involvement and intimacy. First-person narrators are involved and may be characters; third-person narrators are outside observers whose knowledge ranges from observational to all-knowing and who may not be affected by the events. The function is what the reader is denied.