Point of view in short story

1. narrators Point of view in short story

2. Araby • First person omniscient narrator • Seems to be adult telling the story of himself once young or coming of age. • For westerners, Arabs are exotic, and thus represent the orient with its magic and bizarreness.

3. Summary • The nameless narrator of the story talks about life on North Richmond Street. The former tenant of their apartment was a priest who died. Some books have been left behind, and the young boy narrator sometimes looks at them. He is raised by his aunt and uncle. One of his playmates is a boy named Mangan, and the narrator develops a crush on his friend Mangan's sister. Mangan and his sister live in a building across the street. The narrator watches her stealthily, waiting for her to leave in the mornings so that he can follow her on part of his way to school.

4. One day, the girl finally speaks to him, to ask if he will go to Araby. Araby is the name of an upcoming bazaar with an Arabian theme. She can't go, because she is going on a religious retreat that weekend. The narrator, full of romantic notions, says that he will go and find some kind of gift for her. • The boy can think of little but the girl, the Orientalist bazaar, and the gift he will get for her. He gets permission to go, and for days he cannot concentrate. The day finally arrives, and the boy reminds his uncle that he wishes to go to the bazaar that night. His uncle will have to get home on time to give him the money for a ride to the bazaar, as well as a bit of spending money.

5. That night, his uncle is late. The boy despairs of being able to go at all, but finally his uncle comes home. His uncle has forgotten about the bazaar, and by now it is quite late. But the boy still wants to go, and he takes the small sum of money for the train and heads off. • He arrives at the bazaar just as it is closing. Only a few stalls are open. He examines the goods, but they are far too expensive for him. The lights are being shut off, and the narrator despairs: "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."

6. The tell tale heart • First person unreliable (mad) • Especially to take a journey inside the mind of some insane character. • The effect and point of view is clear in this technique • Poe fond of horror themes

7. summary • The Tell-Tale Heart" is a first-person narrative of an unnamed narrator[1] who insists he is sane but suffering from a disease which causes "over-acuteness of the senses". The old man with whom he lives has a clouded, pale, blue "vulture-like" eye which so distresses the narrator that he plots to murder the old man, though the narrator states that he loves the old man, and hates only the eye. The narrator insists that his careful precision in committing the murder shows that he cannot possibly be insane. For seven nights, the narrator opens the door of the old man's room, a process which takes him a full hour. However, the old man's vulture eye is always closed, making it impossible to "do the work".

8. On the eighth night, the old man awakens and sits up in his own bed while the narrator performs his nightly ritual. The narrator does not draw back and, after some time, decides to open his lantern. A single ray of light shines out and lands precisely on the old man's eye, revealing that it is wide open. Hearing the old man's heart beating unusually and dangerously quick from terror, the narrator decides to strike, jumping out with a loud yell and smothering the old man with his own bed. The narrator dismembers the body and conceals the pieces under the floorboards, making certain to hide all signs of the crime. Even so, the old man's scream during the night causes a neighbor to report to the police. The narrator invites the three arriving officers in to look around. He claims that the screams heard were his own in a nightmare and that the man is absent in the country. Confident that they will not find any evidence of the murder, the narrator brings chairs for them and they sit in the old man's room, right on the very spot where the body is concealed, yet they suspect nothing, as the narrator has a pleasant and easy manner about him.

9. The narrator, however, begins to hear a faint noise. As the noise grows louder, the narrator comes to the conclusion that it is the heartbeat of the old man coming from under the floorboards. The sound increases steadily, though the officers seem to pay no attention to it. Shocked by the constant beating of the heart and a feeling that not only are the officers aware of the sound, but that they also suspect him, the narrator confesses to killing the old man and tells them to tear up the floorboards to reveal the body.