Point of view (literature)

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For the grammar term, see grammatical person.

In literature and storytelling, a point of view is the related experience of the narrator — not that of the author. Authors rarely, in fiction, insert or inject their own voice, as this challenges the suspension of disbelief. Texts encourage the reader to identify with the narrator, not with the author.

1 Third person
2 First person
3 Second person
4 Additional points of view
5 Changing points of view within the story
6 Use of point of view in other creative media
7 See also
8 External links
9 Notes

Literary narration can occur from the first-person, or third-person point of view. In a novel, the first person is commonly used: "I saw, We did,", etc. In an encyclopedia or textbook narrators often work in the third-person: "that happened, the king died", etc. For additional vagueness, imprecision, and detachment, some writers employ the passive voice: "it is said that the president was compelled to be heard...".

The ability to use viewpoints effectively provides one measure of someone's writing ability. The writing markschemes used for National Curriculum assessments in England reflect this: they encourage the awarding of marks for the use of viewpoint as part of a wider judgment regarding the composition and effect of the text.

Most novels are narrated either in the first person, in "third person omniscient", or in "third person limited". A third person omniscient narrator can shift focus from character to character with knowledge of everyone's thoughts and of events of which no single character would be aware. The third person limited point of view picks one character and follows him or her around for the duration of the book. The narrator may be more observant than the character, but is limited to what that one character could theoretically observe. In a minor variant on third person limited, narrator may "travel" with a single character, but the point-of-view conventions may be extended to allow the narrator access to other characters' thoughts and motivations. Another common variant is for a novel to have different third person limited point of views in different sections. Thus, Chapter One might follow Jane, while Chapter Two follows Dick, and Chapter Three follows their dog.

[edit] Third person

Main article: Third-person narrative

Third person is the most common narrative perspective used in contemporary literature; it is the classic storytelling mode in which the storyteller is recounting a series of events to an audience. Third person includes a number of more specific techniques which offer different benefits and limitations to the writer.

Third person limited became the most popular narrative perspective during the 20th century. Third person limited is sometimes called the "over the shoulder" perspective; it shows the story as though the narrator could only describe events that could be perceived by a viewpoint character. It can be used very objectively, showing what is actually happening without the filter of the protagonist's personality, which can allow the author to reveal information that the protagonist doesn't know or realize. However, some authors use an even narrower and more subjective perspective, as though the viewpoint character were narrating the story; this is dramatically very similar to the first person, allowing in-depth revelation of the protagonist's personality, but uses third-person grammar. Some writers will shift perspective from one viewpoint character to another.

Historically, the "third person omniscient" perspective was more common. This is the tale told from the point of view of the storyteller who knows all the facts. The primary advantage is that it injected the narrator's own perspective and reputation into the story, creating a greater sense of objectivity for the story. The disadvantage of this mode is that it creates more distance between the reader and the story. A variation is where the narrator is a character in the story; a small amount of the story might be told in first person.

There is also a "Third person objective" perspective which tells a story without detailing any characters' thoughts and instead gives an objective point of view. This point of view can be described as "a fly on the wall" and is often used in newspaper articles. For instance the writer is restricted to not being able to use I, me or my.

[edit] First person

Main article: First-person narrative

First person narration is used somewhat less frequently. The first-person point of view sacrifices omniscience and omnipresence for a greater intimacy with one character. It allows the reader to see what the focus character is thinking; it also allows that character to be further developed through his or her own style in telling the story. First-person narrations may be told like third person ones; on the other hand, the narrator may be conscious of telling the story to a given audience, perhaps even at a given place and time, for a given reason. In extreme cases, the first-person narration may be told as a story within a story, with the narrator appearing as a character in the frame story.

In a first person narrative, the narrator is a character in the story. This character takes actions, makes judgments and has opinions and biases. In this case the narrator gives and withholds information based on its own viewing of events. It is an important task for the reader to determine as much as possible about the character of the narrator in order to decide what "really" happens. This type of narrator is usually noticeable for its ubiquitous use of the first-person pronoun, "I". Example:

"I could picture it. I have a rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends. We went out to the Cafe Napolitain to have an aperitif and watch the evening crowd on the Boulevard." from The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. The narrator is protagonist Jake Barnes.

In very rare cases, stories are told in first person plural, that is, using "we" rather than "I." Examples are the short stories "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl" by Maxim Gorky and "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, the novella "Anthem" by Ayn Rand, and the novels The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, During the Reign of the Queen of Persia by Joan Chase, Our Kind by Kate Walbert, and Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris.^[1]

The narrator can be the protagonist (e.g., Gulliver in Gulliver's Travels), someone very close to him, who is privy to his thoughts and actions (Dr. Watson in Sherlock Holmes), or an ancillary character who has little to do with the action of the story (Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby). A narrator can even be a character relating the story second-hand, such as Lockwood in Wuthering Heights.

The first person narrator is the type most obviously distinct from the author. It is a character in the work, who must follow all of the rules of being a character, even during its duties as narrator. For it to know anything, it must experience it with its senses, or be told about it. It can interject its own thoughts and opinions, but not those of any other character, unless clearly told about those thoughts.

In autobiographical fiction, the first person narrator is the character of the author (with varying degrees of accuracy). The narrator is still distinct from the author and must behave like any other character and any other first person narrator. Examples of this kind of narrator include Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries and Kurt Vonnegut in Timequake. In some cases, the narrator is writing a book ("the book in your hands"), therefore it has most of the powers and knowledge of the author.

The first person narrator may directly address the reader, though it is usually considered bad form unless there is a valid reason and explanation. Usually this is done when the intended audience is also a fictional character within the book. This is the case in novels written in the form of letters, known as epistolary novels, (Bram Stoker's Dracula) or as told to another character (Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint).

[edit] Second person

Main article: Second-person narrative

A small number of novels have been written in the second person, frequently paired with the present tense. A relatively prominent example is Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, where the central character is clearly modeled on himself, and he seems to have decided that second-person point of view would create even more intimacy than first-person, creating the feeling that the reader is blind, in a sense, and the plot is leading him or her along. It is almost universally agreed that second-person narration is hard to manage, especially in a serious work. Other examples of second-person narrative are the Choose Your Own Adventure children's books, in which the reader actually makes decisions and jumps around the book accordingly; most interactive fiction; different chapters from many novels written by Chuck Palahniuk; several chapters of Karin Lowachee's Warchild, and the first chapter of A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh.

This type of narration is most common in interactive fiction and Choose Your Own Adventure books. Role-playing games could also be considered second person fiction. The second person format has been used in at least a few popular novels, most notably Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, and Tom Robbins' Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas as well as many short stories. When done well, the readers imagine themselves within the action, which can be used to place them in different situations, for example in Iain Banks' novel Complicity, where the chapters that deal with the actions of a murderer are in the second person. Most stories written in second person are probably closer to first-person with "you" replacing "I".

An even rarer, but stylish version of second person narration takes the form of a series of imperative statements with the implied subject "you", as in this example from Lorrie Moore's "How to Become a Writer":

"Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life."

[edit] Additional points of view

In some cases, the term fourth person may apply when several people are conversing and one person begins referring to another of the conversants using terms that seem to exclude that person from the conversation. For example: Andrea, Bethany, and Chelsea are having a conversation with each other and Andrea says a phrase such as "Did you know Bethany enjoys accounting?" Andrea must be speaking directly to both people while referring to Bethany as though she were a fourth person.

[edit] Changing points of view within the story

While the general rule is for novels to adopt a single approach to point of view throughout, there are exceptions. Epistolary novels, very common in the early years of the novel, generally consist of a series of letters written by different characters, and necessarily switching when the writer changes; the classic book Dracula by Bram Stoker takes this approach. Sometimes, though, they may all be letters from one character, such as C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters and Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary. Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island switches between third and first person. Many of William Faulkner's take a series of first-person points of view. Zach's Lie by Roland Smith changes from third-person to first-person.

[edit] Use of point of view in other creative media

Main article: Narrator

**Common uses of grammatical person**
	Past	Present	Future
First	autobiographies	wills	shopping lists
Second	letters	adventure books	ransom notes
Third	novels	plays	instructions

In literature, person is used to describe the viewpoint from which the narrative is presented. Although second-person perspectives are occasionally used, the most commonly encountered are first and third person. Third person omniscient specifies a viewpoint in which readers are provided with information not available to characters within the story; without this qualifier, readers may or may not have such information.

In movies and video games first- and third-person are often used to describe camera viewpoints; the former being a character's own, and the latter being the more familiar "general" camera showing a scene. The second-person may also be used.

For example, in a horror film, the first-person perspective of an antagonist could become a second-person perspective on a potential victim's actions. A third-person shot of the two characters could be used to show the narrowing distance between them.

In video games, a first-person perspective is used most often in the first-person shooter genre, such as in Doom, or in simulations (racing games, flight simulation games, and such). Third-person perspectives on characters are typically used in all other games. Since the arrival of 3D computer graphics in games it is often possible for the player to switch between first- and third-person perspectives at will; this is usually done to improve spatial awareness, but can also improve the accuracy of weapons use in generally third-person games such as the Metal Gear Solid franchise.

Text-based interactive fiction conventionally has description written in the second person (though exceptions exist), telling the character what she or he is seeing and doing. This practice is also encountered occasionally in text-based segments of graphical games.

One of the few examples of a second-person perspective in a modern video game is in Metal Gear Solid. During one set-piece battle, attempting to enter the first-person view instead shows the antagonist's view of the player's avatar. The concept of a second-person shooter has also been explored by artist Julian Oliver.