Text Analysis and
History
Session Three: Point of View
Agenda
 Repair
Work: story, plot, character, and
characterization
 Point of view
 Group work: Point of view in ”The Day
They Burned the Books” and ”The Moment
Before the Gun Went Off”
Repair Work
 Story
and plot
 Character and characterization
42. WILLIAM J. CLINTON 1993-2001
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/williamjcli
nton/

President Clinton was born William Jefferson
Blythe III on August 19, 1946, in Hope,
Arkansas, three months after his father died in a
traffic accident. […] He excelled as a student
and as a saxophone player and once considered
becoming a professional musician. As a
delegate to Boys Nation while in high school, he
met President John Kennedy in the White House
Rose Garden. The encounter led him to enter a
life of public service.
Graham Greene, ”I Spy”
 ”Charlie
Stowe waited until he heard his
mother snore before he got out of bed.
Even then he moved with caution and
tiptoed to the window.” (534)
Story - plot

Non-fiction:
 Story


Plot

Plot

Character

Character

Characterization

Characterization
Fiction:
 Story
An introduction to point of view
 What
do we study when we study point of
view?




Whose ”version(s)” of events are we
presented with?
Why has the author decided to present us
with that particular version?
How does he persuade us and about what by
designing the point of view in a particular
manner?
The creation of sympathy and antipathy
An introduction to point of view
 Some
competing terms (metaphors and
analogies):




Point of view
Perspective
Voice
Tone
An introduction to point of view

First person points of
view

Third person points of
view
(The second person point of view)


"You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place
like this at this time of the morning. But here you are,
and you cannot say the terrain is entirely unfamiliar,
although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub
talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either
Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might become
clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a
little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it
might not. A small voice inside you insists that this
epidemic lack of clarity is a result of too much of that
already."
Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City (1984)
First person points of view
 Witness
or minor participant, narratorcharacter: e.g., Dr Watson
 Central character, narrator-protagonist:
e.g., Robinson Crusoe, Bridget Jones’s
Diary, ”The 24-Hour Dog”
 The self-conscious narrator
 The unreliable narrator
The first person split

Narrator:
 Speaks
 The present: the time
of the narration

Protagonist/
character:
 Acts
 The past: the time of
the action
Charles Dickens, Great
Expectations

My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my
infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than
Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
 I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone
and my sister - Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never
saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them
(for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies
regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their
tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea
that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the
character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I
drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five
little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were
arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory
of five little brothers of mine - who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly
early in that universal struggle - I am indebted for a belief I religiously
entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in
their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of
existence. (Chapter One)
Unreliable narration: An example
Sunday 19 March
8st 12, alchohol units 3, cigarettes 10, calories 2465 (but mainly
chocolate).
Hurray. Whole new positive perspective on
birthday. Have been talking to Jude about
book she has been reading about festivals
and rites of passage in primitive cultures
and am feeling happy and serene. (Helen
Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary, p. 81)
Unreliable narration: An example


"It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my
brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.
Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved
the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never
given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it
was his eye! yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled
that of a vulture--a pale blue eye, with a film over it.
Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by
degrees--very gradually--I made up my mind to take the
life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for
ever."
-Edgar Allan Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart"
Self-conscious narration: An Example

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine ; ---- they are the life, the soul of
reading ; -- take them out of this book
for instance, -- you might as well take the
book along with them; -- one cold eternal
winter would reign in every page of it ;
restore them to the writer ; ---- he steps
forth like a bridegroom, -- bids All hail ;
brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.

(Lawrence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,
Gentleman. Vol I, p. 163 (1759))
The third person points of view

The omniscient point
of view

The limited point of
view
The third person omniscient point
of view

The intrusive point of
view
 ”telling”
 The narrator
comments and
evaluates on events
in his own voice

The unintrusive point
of view
 ”showing”
 The narrator
describes and reports
objectively
The third person limited point of
view
 The
narrator limits himself to what is
thought, felt, perceived, and remembered
by a single character
An example:

Mr Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts,
sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the
experience of three and twenty years had been
insufficient to make his wife understand his
character. Her mind was less difficult to develop.
She was a woman of mean understanding, little
information, and uncertain temper. When she
was disconcerted she fancied herself nervous.
The business of her life was to get her daughters
married; its solace was visiting and news.” (Jane
Austen, Pride and Prejudice, p. 53)
An Example:

”He did not complain. It was the way of life, and
it was just. He had been born close to the earth,
close to the earth had he lived, and the law
thereof was not new to him. It was the law of all
flesh. Nature was not kindly to the flesh. She
had no concern for that conctrete thing called
the individual. Her interest lay in the species, the
race. This was the deepest abstraction old
Koskoosh’s babaric mind was capable of, but he
grasped it firmly. He saw it exemplified in all life.”
(Jack London, ”The Law of Life”, p. 973-74)
An example:

”Mrs Tulliver was what is called a goodtempered person – never cried when she was a
baby, on any slighter ground than hunger and
pins; and from the cradle upwards had been
healthy, fair, plump, and dull witted; in short the
flower of her family for beauty and amiability. But
milk and mildness are not the best things for
keeping, and when they turn only a little sour,
they may disagree with young stomachs
seriously.” (George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss)
An Example:

Charlie Stove waited until he heard his mother snore
before he got out of bed. Even then he moved with
caution and tiptoed to the window. The front of the
house was irregular, so that it was possible to see a
light burning in his mother’s room. But now all the
windows were dark. A search-light passed across
the sky, lighting the banks of cloud and probing the
dark deep spaces between, seeking enemy airships.
The wind blew from the sea, and Charlie Stowe
could hear behind his mother’s snores the beating of
the waves. A draught through the crack in the
window-frame stirred his night-shirt. Charlie Stowe
was frightened.(Graham Greene, ”I Spy”, p. 534)
An Example

When the door had closed Charlie Stowe tiptoed
upstairs and got into bed. He wondered why his
father had left the house again so late at night and
who the strangers were. Surprise and awe kept him
for a little while awake. It was as if a familiar
photograph had stepped from the frame to reproach
him with neglect. He remembered how his father
had held tight to his collar and fortified himself with
proverbs, and he thought for the first time that, while
his mother was boisterous and kindly, his father was
very lilke himself, doing things in the dark which
frightened him.” (Graham Green, ”I Spy”, p. 537)
Jean Rhys, ”The Day They Burned
the Books”
 The
first person point of view
 The first person split: The time of the
action / the time of the narration
 Minor participant or central character /
protagonist?
 The narrator’s and/or the character’s /
protagonist’s point of view.
 The thematic function of the point of view
Nadine Gordimer, ”The Moment
Before the Gun Went Off”
 The
third person point of view.
 How many points of view are we
presented with?
 Why?
 How does the point of view produce
sympathy or antipathy?