V. Point of View
Submission:
Assignments must be done in Microsoft Word. Combine the writing assignments for this
section in single document titled “Point of View.” Include your name, class, and Course ID in
the paper heading. Save the document as POV
+ Your Last Name. Then e-mail the assignments as an attachment to [email protected].
Assignment 1:
Read “Point of View” in The Bedford Introduction to Literature,
pages 199-204.
Narrators
Meyer tells us that “Point of view refers to who tells us the story and how it is told” (199). Stories are told by narrators created by the author. Narrators can participate in the story as characters or be non-participants. First-person narrators participate in stories as major or minor characters. (Person refers to the pronoun used by the narrator in telling the story. The first-person pronoun is I; the third-person pronouns are he, she, and it) Many of the stories we tell in our daily lives are first-person narratives because we include ourselves as characters.
I went to sign-up for classes the other day and found that I needed a measles vaccination to register.
“Isn’t this shot meant for students who live on campus?” I asked.
The lady behind the desk in the admissions office gave me this bored look and said, “It doesn’t matter if you live on campus or not. You still have to get the shot.”
“But, I’m taking an on-line course,” I protested.
“You might give your computer the virus,” she said, smiling.
Other stories we tell are third-person narratives because we are talking about people other than ourselves.
Bill went to sign-up for classes the other day and found that he needed a measles vaccination to register.
“Isn’t this shot meant for students who live on campus?” he asked.
The lady behind the desk in the admissions office gave Bill a bored look and said, “It doesn’t matter if you live on campus or not. You still have to get the shot.”
“But, I’m taking an on-line course,” Bill protested.
“You might give your computer the virus,” she said, smiling.
Even though these two stories use almost exactly the same words, they give us a different perspective of the characters and events. The narrator in the first story sees the characters and events from inside the story. As readers, we share the narrator’s frustration in dealing with the woman in the admission’s office. The narrator seems to be right, and the woman in the admissions office appears to be a petty bureaucratic. The narrator in the second story views the characters and events from outside the story. The narrator does not focus primarily on Bill but gives us a more objective view of both characters. We can see that Bill is frustrated, but it is also possible to sympathize with the woman in the admissions office. Perhaps she is in a powerless position where she must enforce a rule she knows is ridiculous and does so with humor and grace.
Third-Person Narrators
Meyer tells us that there are three types of third-person narrators: (1) Omniscient, (2) Limited Omniscient, and (3) Objective (200).
The omniscient narrator sees everything and can take us into the hearts and minds of characters. Omniscient narrators can comment on the stories they tell or remain neutral. The narrator in “The Story of an Hour” sees and hears what the characters say and do as well as what they think. The narrator also editorializes or comments on the characters, making inferences and judgments about them.
“She
was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a
certain strength. But now there was a dull
stare in the eyes, whose gaze was fixed far away off yonder on one of those
patches of blue sky. It was not a glance
of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
“There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.” (15)
The narrator begins describing Louise Mallard’s external features but quickly moves to commenting on the meaning of the lines in her face and the significance of her dull stare. In the second paragraph, the narrator looks into Louise Mallard’s mind and reads her thoughts and feelings. At one point, the narrator tells us the exact words Louise is thinking, “What was it?” The narrator exhibits a great deal of control over the story and is clearly more intelligent and perceptive than Louise Mallard. Louise does not quite know what is happening to her as she reaches an awareness of her new-found freedom, but the narrator does. Chopin uses this point of view to indicate that Louise Mallard is not a cold, calculating woman who has been waiting to be free of her husband, but a woman whose awareness of her need for freedom surfaces from her subconscious mind only after she experiences the shock of her husband’s death.
Assignment 2:
Re-read “The Lady with the Pet Dog” by Anton Chekhov in The Bedford
Introduction to Literature, pages 213-224.
Write a paragraph on your response to Gurov. What is your initial impression of Gurov? How do you
feel about him at the end of the story?
Explain your answer.
Chekhov uses an omniscient narrator in “The Lady with the Pet Dog,” but the point of view is neutral rather than editorial. Chekhov wrote the following about point of view:
In my opinion it is not the writer's job to solve such problems as God, pessimism, etc; his job is merely to record who, under what conditions, said or thought what about God or pessimism. The artist is not meant to be a judge of his characters and what they say; his only job is to be an impartial witness. I heard two Russians in a muddled conversation about pessimism, a conversation that solved nothing; all I am bound to do is reproduce that conversation exactly as I heard it. Drawing conclusions is up to the jury, that is, the readers. My only job is to be talented, that is, to know how to distinguish important testimony from unimportant, to place my characters in the proper light and speak their language. — To Alexei Suvorin, May 30, 1888. (Chekhov on Writing)
Some readers respond to “The Lady with the Pet Dog” according to their moral values or religious beliefs. Some sympathize with Gurov and Anna; some don not. Some examine and evaluate their own beliefs about love and marriage in light of the circumstances in the story. By using a neutral omniscient point of view, Chekhov encourages us examine the characters and draw our own conclusions about their behavior.
In the following selections, the narrators remain neutral, but the point of view is different. Chekhov uses an omniscient narrator who can see Gurov’s thoughts and feelings, and Hemmingway used an objective narrator who stays “outside” of Krebs’s mind. The point of view affects the way we read a story. In “The Lady with the Pet Dog” we know how Gurov feels, but we don’t know why he “Soldier’s Home” is a difficult story to read because the narrator presents a conversation between Krebs and his mother and only includes a few direct clues that indicate how the characters are feeling. At one point Krebs’s mother says responds to him “chokily.” At another point the narrator tells us, “Krebs felt sick and vaguely nauseated.” We are left to imagine what this conversation might have been like based on how we interpret the dialog and characters. Hemmingway’s approach, however, approximates real life situations more closely than Chekhov’s. Unless we have a mother like the woman in “Crash Dummies,” there is usually no one there to tell us what other people are thinking or feeling.
- From “The Lady with the Pet Dog” by Anton Chekhov
It seemed to him that he had been sufficiently tutored by bitter experience to call them [women] what he pleased, and yet he could not have lived without “the inferior race” for two days together. In the company of men he was bored and ill at ease, he was chilly and incommunicative with them; but when he was among women he felt free, and he knew what to speak to them about and how to comport himself; and even to be silent with them with no strain on him. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole make-up there was something attractive and elusive that disposed women in his favor and allured them. He knew that, and some force seemed to draw him to them, too. (214)
- From “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemmingway
“Don’t you love your mother, dear boy.?”
“No,” Krebs said.
His mother looked at
him from across the table. Her eyes were
shiny. She started crying.
“I don’t love
anybody,” Krebs said.
It
was no good. He couldn’t tell her, he
couldn’t make her see it. It was silly
to have said it. He had only hurt her. He went over and took hold of her arm. She was crying with her head in her hands.
“I didn’t mean it,” he
said. “I was just angry at
something. I didn’t mean I didn’t love
you.”
His mother went on
crying. Krebs put his arm on her
shoulder.
“Please, please,
mother. Please believe me.”
“All right,” his
mother said chokily.
She looked up at him. “I believe
you, Harold.”
Krebs kissed her hair.
She put her face up to him.
“I’m your mother,” she
said, “I held you next to my heart when you were a tiny baby.”
Krebs felt sick and
vaguely nauseated.
“I know, mummy,” he
said. “I’ll try to be a good boy for
you.”
“Would you kneel and
pray with me, Harold?” his mother asked.
They knelt down beside
the dining-room table and Krebs’s mother prayed.
“Now, you pray,
Harold,” she said.
“I can’t,” Krebs said.
“Try, Harold.”
“I can’t.”
“Do you want me to
pray for you?”
“Yes.” (174)
Assignment 3:
Re-read “Killings” by Andre Dubus in The
Bedford Introduction to Literature, pages 100-112.
Andre Dubus uses a limited omniscient narrator in “Killings.” Unlike Chekhov’s narrator who can see into both Gurov and Anna’s minds, Dubus’s narrator focuses our attention on Matt, allowing us to see Matt’s thoughts and feelings but not the thoughts and feelings of the other characters. We have already discussed the unusual plot structure of the story – the events at the beginning of the story do not follow in chronological order; however, once Matt kidnaps Strout, the events do follow in chronological order. The plot structure evolves directly out of the point of view. The narrator presents the story from Matt’s perspective. Although the story seems to begin with Frank’s funeral, we discover on page 89 that Matt has been thinking about the events discussed in the first part of the story while he sitting in his car waiting for Strout to leave the bar:
…And
beneath his listless wandering, everyday in his soul he shot Richard Strout in the face; while Ruth, going about town on
errands, kept seeing him. And at nights
in bed she would hold Matt and cry, or sometimes she was silent and Matt would
touch her tightening arm, her clenched fist.
As his own right fist was now squeezing the butt of the revolver, the last of the drinkers having left the bar, talking to each other, going to their separate cars which were in the front of the bar, out of Matt’s vision. He heard their voices, their cars, and then the ocean again, across the street. The tide was in, and sometimes it smacked against the sea wall. Through the windshield he looked at the dark red side wall of the bar, and then to his left, past Willis, at Strout’s car, and through its windows he could see the now emptied parking lot, the road, the sea wall. He could smell the sea. (105)
The events in the first part of the story are guided by Matt’s thought process as he waits for Strout. They are out of chronological order perhaps because Matt is looking to rationalize or justify what he is about to do, perhaps because the events to this point are out of his control, or perhaps because he can’t allow himself to focus on the present moment. Once he kidnaps Strout, the events proceed in chronological order again because we see the events from Matt’s perspective. Even though Matt is no longer contemplating past events, we still see the events leading to Strout’s murder through Matt’s perspective:
Strout turned to walk, the suitcase in his right hand, and Matt and Willis followed; as Strout cleared the front of his car he dropped the suitcase and, ducking, took one step that was the beginning of a sprint to his right. The gun kicked in Matt’s hand, and the explosion of the shot surrounded him, isolated him in a nimbus of sound that cut him off from all time, all his history, isolated him standing absolutely still on the dirt road with the gun in his hand, looking down at Richard Strout squirming on his belly, kicking one leg behind him, pushing himself forward, toward the woods. Then Matt went to him and shot him once in the back of the head. (110)
We view the killing from Matt’s perspective. We see how he experienced the first and second shots, and we see Strout as Matt saw Strout. In fact, if we go back and re-read the story, we soon discover that we only know what Matt knows about the other characters and the events. Dubus uses a limited omniscient point of view because Matt’s point of view is limited by his desire for revenge. The isolation Matt feels at the end of the story evolves out of his limited perspective.
Assignment 4: Re-read “The
Lady with the Pet Dog” by Joyce Carol Oates in The Bedford Introduction
to Literature, pages 225-240. Write a 1 ½ to 2 page comparison of Chekov’s version of the story and Oates’s version. Discuss differences in point of view, plot,
and character.
Oates,
like Dubus, uses a limited omniscient narrator. The
narrator tells the story from Anna’s perspective and the plot is shaped by the
stream of Anna’s thoughts rather than chronological order. The order of outward events in the story is
not as important as Anna’s internal conflict between her emotional needs and
moral values. The story begins with the
moment that changes her life forever – the moment Anna sees her lover coming
through the crowd at the theatre. This
is the moment readers of romance novels wait for, but here it is the beginning
of a very difficult and painful experience for Anna. The story returns again and again to the
question of whether she should leave her husband for her lover. The limited
omniscient perspective allows us to see how Anna experiences this conflict and
ultimately resolves it.
First-Person Narrators
First-person narrators are also characters in the story. They may be a major character like the narrator in “Battle Royal,” or they may be minor characters like the narrator in “A Rose for Emily.” Because they are part of the story, first-person narrators cannot see into the minds of other characters. They are limited by what they can actually observe, overhear, or learn from others. Their ability to editorialize is limited by the nature of the characters. In “Battle Royal” the narrator is an older man who relates a story from his adolescence. As the valedictorian of his class, the narrator is invited to give his speech in front of a meeting of the white businessmen and political leaders of his town. Prior to delivering his speech, he is invited to take part in the battle royal, a boxing contest in which a number of young black men fight until there is one winner. As a young man, the narrator had been trying to win the respect of the white community with his achievements, but the narrator as an older man reflecting back on this incident sees that the white community will never recognize him for what he is.
The narrator in “A Rose for Emily” has a dual nature. At times the narrator seems to speak like a third-person narrator telling us a story about Miss Emily and the townspeople. He refers to Miss Emily, the other characters, and the townspeople in the third person: he/she/it/them. At other times he speaks as the collective voice of the townspeople as in the following paragraph about Miss Emily’s bizarre behavior after her father’s death:
We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which robbed her, as people will. (93)
This paragraph actually tells us more about the townspeople than Miss Emily. The narrator never enters Emily’s mind to show us what she is thinking and feeling. In the paragraph above, the people make a judgment about Miss Emily without really knowing her. They deny the fact that Emily has psychological problems, though the narrator implies that they will admit it later in the story. They rationalize her behavior ironically enough because they want to hold onto a Southern tradition that is as dead as Emily’s father. This rationalization also relieves them of the responsibility of caring for Miss Emily. They do admit that she is “crazy” when they discover that she has murdered Homer Baron and slept with his dead body, but this allows them to keep their traditions intact. Faulkner’s use of this unusual point of view underscores Emily’s isolation and loneliness. We really never know Emily; we only know what the narrator and townspeople say about her.
The narrator in the following assignment also has a dual nature that adds depth and complexity to his experience with racial prejudice.
Assignment 5:
Read “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison in The Bedford Introduction to
Literature, pages 262-272. Write a 1
page paper on the narrator’s character and explain how the narrator’s character
shapes our perspective of the story. Pay particular attention to the
information the narrator provides about himself in the
first three paragraphs and the final sentence of the story.
Speakers in Poetry
Poems are told by speakers rather than narrators. The difference in terminology stems from the fact that speakers do not necessarily tell stories. It is their “voice” that we are most interested in. In “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes on page 1071-72, the speaker is an African-American woman who gives her son advice presumably during a difficult time in his life. Her message - keep on trying no matter how hard things get – is not just typical parental advice. Her point of view gives the message its substance. The fact that her life has been difficult gives her encouragement authority and credibility.
The speaker in “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, like other speakers and first-person narrators, has a limited perspective and may not be completely reliable. That is, we may not be able to accept what the speaker says at face value.
The Road Not Taken
Two Roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the other for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted that I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
“The Road Not Taken” is often interpreted as a poem in praise of American individuality. The speaker has become successful because at a critical moment in life he or she chose to take a different path in life and that has lead to success. M. Scott Peck wrote a very popular self-help book, The Road Less Traveled, in which he supports this interpretation. However, we cannot understand the poem without understanding the speaker’s character.
The fact that the poem is called “The Road Not Taken” and not “The Road Less Traveled By” is our first clue that the poem is not about individualism. The speaker presents the choice in the poem’s first line, and introduces the idea of regret about making the choice in the second line, “Sorry I could not travel both/ And be one traveler” (1028). The actual choice is not between one road that is frequently traveled and one that is rarely traveled. Both roads are “as just as fair” and “equally lay/ In leaves no steps had trodden black” (1028). In the final stanza, the speaker projects his or her regret about the choice into the future, “I shall be telling this with a sigh/ Somewhere ages and ages hence” (1028). In the final lines the speaker claims to have taken “the one less traveled by,” even though this contradicts the description of the roads in the previous stanza. This contradiction indicates that the speaker is not completely reliable. The last line, so often taken as an affirmation of rugged individualism, is a rationalization. The speaker feels that somewhere down the road he or she will have to justify the choice to avoid feeling regret. The justification, however, is meaningless. The speaker says the choice will make “all the difference” (1028) but does not explain what he or she means by “difference.” In reality, the speaker has no way of knowing how the choice will affect the future, if at all.
Assignment: 6: Read “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost in The Bedford Introduction to Literature, pages 1031-32. Write 1 to 2 paragraphs in which you discuss your initial reaction to the poem. Do you agree with the speaker that the wall is unnecessary or do you agree with the neighbor that “good fences make good neighbors”?
Narrative Point of View in the Drama
Plays usually do not have narrators. Most often, we overhear the characters and view their actions as in Trifles and the scene in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which Peter Quince gathers the “rude mechanicals” to plan their play. We experience the characters directly by what they say and how they act rather than through the eyes of a narrator. In some dramas, however, the actors speak directly to the audience. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is an excellent example of a modern drama that uses a narrator. In the opening speech, Tom speaks directly to the audience and explains his role in the play:
“Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage
magician. He gives you illusion that has
the appearance of truth. I give you
truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the
thirties, when the huge middle class of
The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic. In memory everything seems to happen to music. That explains the fiddle in the wings. I am the narrator of the play, and also a character in it. The other characters are my mother, Amanda, and my sister, Laura, and a gentleman caller who appears in the final scenes. He is the most realistic character in the play, being an emissary from a world of reality that we were somehow set apart from. But since I have a poet’s weakness for symbols, I am using this character also as a symbol; he is the long delayed but always expected something that we live for….” (1869)
Tennessee Williams has Tom tell us that he is both narrator and character, much like a story written in the first person. The play is not directly about Amanda and Laura; it is about Tom’s memories of their life together. The events of the play are shaped by the fact that even though Tom has left them, he cannot escape his memories of them. He is tied to the past, and his memory distorts reality, coloring it with various shades of emotion – longing, regret, anger, pain, and love. We can sense some of the distortion by the elaborate metaphorical language Tom uses in his opening speech. He does not see himself as a deeply troubled man who cannot escape his past but rather as a magician who can give us truth in the form of illusion.
Assignment 7:
Read The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee
The Narrators in Film
Films can also have narrators. The recent film, Seabiscuit, has a narrator who provides important thematic and background information during the film. He introduces the film by telling us that the coming of the automobile was “the beginning and end of imagination all at the same time” (Seabiscuit). Like Tom in The Glass Menagerie, the narrator establishes the social and economic background of the film which tells the story of the great race horse, Seabiscuit, whose victories helped restore faith in the American Dream after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
It
is more typical for directors often use the camera as narrator. The way the camera is positioned, moved, and
focused gives us a certain perspective of the action, characters and
setting. A good example is the opening
scene of In the Bedroom. We see
Frank chasing Natalie across a field.
The shot of lovers running through a field is a stock scene in many
romantic comedies. What makes this one
different is that the camera shows us the lovers only from the waist down. The camera is also positioned below the
actors so that we see higher up Natalie’s skirt than if the camera were level
or above the actors. If this were an
aerial shot like we might see in a romance, we might not see Natalie’s legs at
all. Here, the camera acts like a
voyeur, exploiting the scene for its sexuality.
Voyeurism is a recurring theme throughout the film. In addition, the lovers are not in the center
of the frame. Instead, the frame is
dominated by tall grass blowing in the wind, another stock image from romantic
films. But here the wind is very strong,
which gives the scene a feeling of turbulent sexuality, especially when we
connect it with the title. The camera tells us that this is not going to be a
romance.
Assignment 8: Re-read “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost in The Bedford Introduction to Literature, pages 1031-1032. Write a 1 to 1 ½-page paper in which you analyze the speaker’s point of view in detail. Is the speaker reliable, unreliable, or somewhere in the middle? Does his actions support or conflict with what he says? Does he fully understand the significance of the wall, or is his view limited? Is he right in thinking that his neighbor is an “old stone savage” who won’t go beyond his father’s saying, or is there some truth to the idea that “good fences make good neighbors? When thinking about these questions, consider the following. Frost frequently used his neighbors as models for characters in his poems. At one of his poetry readings, someone said to Frost, “I know that you are the speaker in the poem, but which one of your neighbors is the old stone savage?” Frost replied, “I am the old stone savage!” Frost may have been joking, he may have been irritated by the question, or he may have been trying to indicate that the old stone savage may have a point. Is it possible that good fences make good neighbors?
Assignment 9a: Finish reading In the Lake of the Woods. Write a 1 to 1 ½-page analysis of the novel's point of view. Post your analysis on WebCT in Discussion 5.
The novel contains three distinctly different types of writing. There are narrative chapters that tell the story of John and Cathy Wade. There are chapters that list "evidence" from various people and sources that have been obtained, researched, and organized by the narrator. Finally, there are chapter that contain different hypoptheses presented by the narrator. Each of these methods of story telling is presented from a different point of view. In addition, the novel contains several long footnotes in which the narrator identifies himself, discusses his fascination or obsession with John and Cathy Wade, tells us about the problems he encounters in researching the mystery, and even tells us what to think about what he has written. How do all of these perspectives affect the point of view?
Assignment 9b: Read the postings on WebCT Discussion 5. Revise your analysis of point of view based on what you consider important ideas from the discussions.
Works Cited
Chekhov on Writing.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.”
Dubus, Andre. “Killings.”
Frost, Robert. “Mending Wall.”
Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.”
Hughes, Langston. “Mother to Son.
Meyer, Michael.
Seabiscuit. Dir.Gary Ross. Perf. Jeff Bridges, Tobey McGuire, Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Banks, William H. Macy. Universal Pictures. 2004.
Williams,