Perspectives That Change and Disagree
One text can hold several perspectives
- Multiple, and even contrasting, perspectives can occur within a single text and contribute to the complexity of the text.
- So contrasting perspectives are not a contradiction to resolve — they are a source of complexity, which the rubric rewards.
- The essay's job is to show what having both does, not to pick one.
Contrasting perspectives within one text are...
The essay shows what holding both does, rather than picking one.
A narrator can change
- A narrator or speaker may change over the course of a text as a result of actions and interactions.
- So the voice telling you the story is itself subject to the story.
- A narrator at the end of a novel may not be able to write its first chapter any more.
A narrator may change over the course of a text.
As a result of actions and interactions — the voice is subject to the story.
Changes and inconsistencies make irony
- Changes and inconsistencies in a narrator's or speaker's perspective may contribute to irony or the complexity of the text.
- The mechanism is simple: an early judgement written by a narrator who did not yet know is ironic in retrospect.
- So a change of perspective converts every earlier confident sentence into evidence.
What is this evidence of?
Sort each observation by the CED's three statements.
Changes and inconsistencies in a narrator's perspective may contribute to ____ or complexity.
An early judgement by a narrator who did not yet know is ironic in retrospect.
Contrasting perspectives inside one text are complexity, not a contradiction to resolve. The CED says they contribute to the complexity of the text — so the essay shows what holding both does, and picking a winner throws away the thing the rubric was going to reward.
Select all the steps that prove a narrator changed.
Asserting a feeling is what the two quotations replace.
Measure the change with two quotations
- A change in a narrator is proved the same way a change in a character is: early and late.
- Find the same subject described twice, once near the start and once near the end.
- The difference between the two descriptions is the change, evidenced rather than asserted.
Match each phrase to what it shows.
The cousin never changed; the voice describing him did.
A perspectives pass
- List the perspectives the text carries, and mark any that contrast.
- Find one subject described early and late by the same narrator, and quote both.
- Then say whether the change produces irony, complexity, or both.
In chapter two the narrator calls his cousin's caution "a small life, carefully kept." In chapter thirty he calls the same caution "the only thing any of us managed to hold on to." Nothing about the cousin changed. The narrator did — and the early phrase is now ironic in a way he did not intend.
Multiple, even contrasting, perspectives can occur in one text and contribute to its complexity — show what holding both does rather than picking one. A narrator may change as a result of actions and interactions, and changes and inconsistencies may contribute to irony or complexity. Prove a change with an early and a late quotation.