Point of View

1. Point of View Who speaks, to whom, at what distance?

2. Third Person: he or she • This is when a voice (a version of the author’s voice) that is not part of the story narrates the story. • Omniscience: all-knowing GOD who can • Report the action • Go into the mind of any character • Interpret for us everything about the character’s background, motives, actions, etc. • Move freely in time and space to give panorama, microscopic or historical view, tell us about the past and predict the future • Provide general reflections, judgements and truths. • Limited Omniscience: Can go into the mind of one character but not others. • Objective author: restricted to the external facts that might be observed by any witnes.

3. Second person: You • Still somewhat experimental • The author assigns you, the reader, specific characteristics and reactions, and if you go along with it, you are pulled deeper into the story. • Example (Lorrie Moore, “How to Become a Writer): First try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age—say fourteen. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at fifteen you can write long haiku sentences about thwarted desire. It is a pond, a cherry blossom, a wind brushing against sparrow wing leaving for mountain. Count the syllables. Show your mom. • Second person can also be a way for a character to displace experiences that are traumatic or that he or she is not ready to own—she will say “you always wore pink to those parties” as a way of talking about her younger, compulsively promiscuous self.

4. First Person: I • When a character who is involved in the action tells his or her own story using “I.” • Can be the central character (”Who’s Irish”) or a minor character who acts as a witness of events he sees but which aren’t primarily about him (The Great Gatsby) • Draws readers close to the mind and perceptions of someone who was there, so intimate as a POV. • Be careful, because the “I” telling the story can only know about the things he or she has seen and heard about directly. The author can’t jump in a supply a little additional info to help out.

5. Formats and frames • You can present your story just as a generalized story, like those we read all the time • It can also be useful to think about who is telling the story to whom and for what purpose. • Sharpens the focus of the story, makes it more real for readers if we know why the person saying/writing all this needs to do it. • To communicate this, you could have a character in your story tell it to someone else • in a letter (epistolary form) • In an explanatory monologue (Moby Dick) • In a confession to a lover, to a jury, to the child he will never see grow up • Or you can sidestep all that and have your narrator explaining to him/herself in a diary or interior monologue. • At the far end of interiority you have stream of consciousness, where the writer tries to capture the un-edited flow of thought.

6. At What distance from your character? • Authorial distance (also called psychic distance) is the degree to which we as readers feel either intimacy and identification with, or detachment and alienation from the characters. • Little known fact: abstraction, summary and generality leads to distance from the characters. Example: It started in the backyards. At first the men concentrated on heat and smoke, and on dangerous thrusts with long forks. Their wives gave them aprons in railroad stripes with slogans on the front . . . Then it began to get mixed up who should do the dishes, and you can’t fall back on paper plates forever, and around that time, the wives got tired of makign butterscotch brownies and jello salads and wanted to make money instead, and one thing led to another. (Margaret Atwood, “Simmering”) • Closeness comes through concrete detail, scene, a character’s thoughts, etc. • Often humor comes through a combination of sympathy and detachment: I’m a dishwasher in a restaurant. I’m not trying to impress anybody. I’m not bragging. It’s just what I do. It’s not the glamorous job people make it out to be. Sure, you make a lot of dough and everybody looks up to you and respects you, but then again there’s a lot fo responsibility. It weighs on you. It wears on you. Everybody wants to be a dishwasher these days, I guess, but they’ve got an idealistic view of it.

7. Summary of Point of View options