POINT OF VIEW AND
IRONY
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What is the difference between a first-person
narrator and a third-person narrator?
As readers, we must know how a story is told so that
we can start to understand how much we can trust
the narrator and how much we can believe that the
narrator is telling us, the reader, the truth.
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There are two main limits of first-person narration:
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A first-person narrator is an inside narrator, meaning that
the reader can know all the thoughts, feelings, hopes,
dreams, etc. of the narrator.

While this helps the reader know the narrator better, it also means
that the reader doesn’t have this same information about all the
other characters.

Since the reader doesn’t know everything about everyone, it might
be hard to accurately determine who is “good” and “bad.”

A first-person narrator may be unreliable, meaning that
the reader can’t trust the narrator to tell the truth.

If the reader is told lies by the narrator, it might be hard to
determine what is “really going on.”
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In most stories, a first-person narrator is reliable, but he
or she might not always know all the facts.
Other times, a first-person narrator is unreliable.
Though this happens, it is quite rare.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which was later turned
into a play and then an Academy Award-winning movie, the
narrator suffers from schizophrenia. In the story, the narrator
refers to other characters as growing or shrinking, walls
oozing with slime, and nurses kidnapping Santa Clause in
order to “cure” him.
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There are also limits to third-person narration.
A
third-person narrator may be restricted, or limited, in
what he or she knows. Just like a first-person narrator
might be biased because he only knows his side of the
story, a third-person narrator might only know one
character’s side of the story and could be biased in the
same way.
 Sometimes,
a third-person narrator will know everyone’s
thoughts and feelings, so the narrator would be much less
biased. This type of narrator would be omniscient, meaning
“all knowing.”

Pretend you meet a friend after school and all she
does is complain about how evil her mom is and all
the mean things her mom does. Now pretend later
that day, after your friend has left, you tell these
stories to your older sister. Would you be a thirdperson limited narrator or a third-person omniscient
narrator?

Would the narrator in “Harrison Bergeron” be a
first-person narrator or a third-person narrator? Is
the narrator limited in any way?
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Irony is the difference between what someone
expects to happen and what actually does happen.
We usually divide irony into three main categories:
verbal irony, situational irony, and dramatic irony.


Verbal irony occurs when there is a contrast between
what is said and what is really meant.
Examples:

Suppose a friend falls down the stairs, and you ask him if he
is hurt. He responds, “I’m fine. The ground is as soft as
concrete.”

Steve sees that he earned a poor grade on his test and is
disappointed in himself. Jared, who sits next to him, looks
over and says, “Wow, way to go, Einstein.”

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Situational irony occurs when what happens is very different
from what someone expects to happen.
Examples:

Suppose a race-car driver survives a horrible accident
without any injuries. However, when he gets home, he trips on
a cord and breaks his arm.

Suppose your neighbor spends all day trying to fix his
refrigerator because it is broken. After working on it for
four hours, he realizes that it has simply been unplugged the
whole time.

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Dramatic irony occurs when the audience or reader knows something that a
character does not know.
Examples:

In The Lion King, Simba runs away from home because he thinks he is
responsible for his dad’s death. However, the viewer knows that Scar is
really the one who killed Mufasa.

In most scary movies, the audience knows something bad is about to
happen to a character, but the character does not know this (for
example, the viewer might know that a bad guy is hiding in the closet).
Dramatic irony helps to build suspense and excitement for the
reader/viewer.