Name _________________________________
Date ______________
Period ______
Understanding Point of View
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Participant Point of View
A. first-person (use 1st person pronouns—I, me, my, we, us, our)
B. types of 1st person
1. narrator as major character
2. narrator as minor character
3. innocent-eye narrator (child, developmentally disabled)—narrator is naïve,
creating an ironic effect
4. stream of consciousness (interior monologue)—narrator tells the story in an
unbroken flood of thought and awareness, attempting to capture exactly what is
going on in the mind of the character
5. see different times in narrator’s life
Non-participant Point of View
A. third-person point of view (use of 3rd person pronouns—he, him, she, her, they, them)
B. types of 3rd person
1. omniscient narrator—narrator can enter the minds of all characters
2. limited omniscient narrator—narrator is limited to minds of a few or one character
3. objective narrator—narrator does not enter any mind, only tells what can be seen
and heard.
Purposes of Participant Points of View
A. offers immediacy
1. can approach other characters as closely as one person to another
2. can be an eyewitness of others
3. can summarize events and retreat from a scene and meditate on significance
B. allows reader to be discerning, determining trust of narrator
1. can only observe others and not know inner thoughts
2. due to above, conclusions may be inaccurate
3. hence, reader may question validity of opinions
C. may contribute to dramatic irony with a discrepancy between what narrator believes
and what reader understands
Purposes of Non-Participant Points of View
A. omniscient POV
1. allows great freedom
2. shift focus from the close view to the larger perspective
3. may comment on events, thus explaining their significance to reader
B. limited omniscient POV
1. creates a sense of distance from other characters
2. the story is more unified
C. Objective POV
1. allows inferences by readers through their observances of dialogue and external
action
2. with readers not influenced by narrator’s statements but subtly by author’s
selection of diction and detail.
Analyzing Point of View
1. What is the point of view and purpose for that point of view for the story?
2. Retell the story from a different point of view. This can be from participant to nonparticipant (or vice versa), a different character, or even an object or animal.
3. What is the purpose in the new point of view?