Point of View (Who’s telling this story?) “To identify the narrator, describing any part he or she plays in the events and any limits placed upon his knowledge, is to identify the story’s point of view.” Fiction = Story When you read a story, you enter a world created by the author this world has its own logic; therefore, it cannot be judged by the rules and logic of our world (e.g., you could have a 42-shooter in fiction) Narrator Every story is told BY someone; that someone is the narrator we need to know what kind of person our narrator is (i.e., is s/he a character in the story? Does s/ he seem to know everything that is going on? Can we trust her/him?) NOTE: In order to fully understand a story, we must determine WHO is telling it (i.e., what kind of narrator do we have?) the same story told by two different narrators would, in the end, be entirely different Narrator a Participant (Writing in the First Person) e.g. “How I Met My Husband,” We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves a major character a minor character Narrator a Nonparticipant (Writing in the Third Person) e.g. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” all-knowing (seeing into any of the characters) = “omniscient” seeing into one major character seeing into one minor character objective (not seeing into any characters) Editorial omniscience: ❂ an all-seeing narrator goes beyond reporting the thoughts of his or her characters and also offers critical judgment or commentary, thereby making his own thoughts or philosophies clear. Impartial omniscience: ❂ all-seeing narrator presents the thoughts and actions of the characters without judging them or commenting on them. Limited (selective) omniscience: (e.g. “The Garden Party”) Also called limited third-person point of view. The narrator sees into the minds of some but not all of the characters, usually through the eyes of the protagonist or other major character. For the author, this can be a compromise between the immediacy of the first-person point of view and the mobility of the third person. Innocent/Naïve narrator ❂ narrator is a character in the story and fails to understand all of the implications of the story he or she is telling; often this narrator is a child or a childlike adult. Unreliable narrator e.g. “The Tell-Tale Heart”; “Why I Live at the P.O.” narrator who – intentionally or not – relates events in a subjective or distorted manner. The author will generally provide some indication early on in such stories to tell us that we are not to trust the narrator completely. Questions about the narrator For a series of questions to ask yourself in order to understand your narrator more clearly, see Study Guides and Strategies: Reading Fiction: http://www.studygs.net/fiction.htm. The site also has a short quiz you can take to see if you can recognize what type of narrator you've encountered.