Learner Resource 1 –
Narrative perspective
Add your own examples of each of the different types of narrative perspective.
External point of view
She sits in the reading room of the public library, in a cracked leather armchair, writing letters to her mother,
or reading magazines or one of her Bengali books from home.
Ashima’s internal point of view
In spite of her dread she feels a thrill; this will be the first time she’s heard her mother’s voice in nearly
three years.
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Ashoke’s internal point of view
Early mornings, when he senses that she is quietly crying, he puts an arm around her but can think of nothing
to say, feeling that it is his fault, for marrying her, for bringing her here.
Omniscient narrator?
Do these comments (in italics) sound like Gogol’s, or an omniscient narrator’s?
(p. 190) The entrance is easy to miss, a scratched-up glass door between a newsstand and a nail salon. It’s the
first apartment he has to himself, after an evolving chain of room-mates all through college and graduate
school.
He prefers New York, a place which his parents do not know well, whose beauty they are blind to, which
they fear.
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Gogol’s internal point of view
Other characters’ internal point of view: Sonia? Maxine? Moush?
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© OCR 2016 - This resource may be freely copied and distributed, as long as the OCR logo and this message remain intact and OCR is acknowledged as the originator of this work.
OCR acknowledges the use of the following content: Young Indian couple – Helencanada/Istockphoto.com
Excerpts from the Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. Copyright © 2003 by Jhunpa Lahiri. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All Rights Reserved.
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