Different Perspectives, Different Texts
IntroducedThree things change with the perspective
- Different character, narrator or speaker perspectives often reveal different information, develop different attitudes, and influence different interpretations of a text and the ideas in it.
- Three effects, and they are not the same claim.
- Information is what you get; attitude is how it is coloured; interpretation is what the whole text then means.
Two narrators describe the same dinner: one reviews the soup, the other asks where the host went.
Select all the effects the CED gives to different perspectives.
The plot is the same; what changes is access, colouring and meaning.
Different information
- Two characters in the same room have access to different facts.
- In a long novel this is structural: whole subplots exist only in one character's knowledge.
- So ask, at any point, who knows what — and what the reader knows because of whose perspective they are in.
If two characters describe the same event differently, one of them is lying.
Each perspective develops its own attitude toward the same event.
Different attitudes
- The same fact carries a different attitude depending on who reports it.
- A marriage described by the bride, the mother and the creditor is three different marriages.
- None of them is lying; each perspective develops its own attitude toward the same event.
Information, attitude, or interpretation?
Sort each observation by which of the three effects it shows.
The effect most essays fail to reach is...
Showing two characters know different facts proves only the first claim.
Different information, different attitude and different interpretation are three separate claims. An essay that shows two characters know different facts has proved the first and often stops there — while the marks are in the third: what each perspective makes of the idea the events raise.
Perspectives influence different interpretations of a text and the ____ in it.
So a novel with two perspectives on duty offers two readings of duty itself.
Different interpretations of the ideas
- The CED's third effect is the largest: perspectives influence different interpretations of a text and the ideas in it.
- So a novel that gives you two perspectives on duty is offering two readings of duty itself.
- The book need not choose, and the strongest essays notice when it does not.
Put the perspectives pass in order.
The last step is where an essay stops describing and starts interpreting.
A perspectives pass
- Pick one event. Write what each perspective knows about it.
- Write the attitude each takes toward it.
- Then name the idea the event touches, and how each perspective reads that idea.
Information: only the sister knows the debt was already paid. Attitude: the brother speaks of the estate as a burden, the sister as a rescue. Interpretation: the novel is offering two readings of what a family owes, and it never rules on which is right — which is why the ending can be read twice.
Different perspectives reveal different information, develop different attitudes, and influence different interpretations of the text and its ideas. These are three separate claims — most essays prove the first and stop, while the marks are in what each perspective makes of the idea.