Narrative Voice and Point of View

Narrative Voice and Point of View Jenny Perez, Jasmine Pineda, and Patrick Smith

Narrative Voice • Narration: act of telling a story • Narrator: one who is telling the story • Forms of Narrative: • Novel, novella, short story • Examples • Great Gatsby narrated by Nick Carraway • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn narrated by Huck Finn • Identity always differs from that of the author’s because the narrator is their invention, in some sense

Point of View • Point of view can be identified by the pronoun that the narrator uses to recount events • “I,” and “We” for the first-person • “He,” “She,” or “They” for the third-person • “You” for the second-person

First Person • Use of “I” or “We” • Advantages: Immediacy and directness • Allows the reader to engage with the speaker • First-hand experiences • Disadvantages: POV Limitations • The narrator can only relate to what he/she has witnessed • Example: • “It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.” - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Second Person • Narrator addresses the audience directly using the pronoun “You” • Assumes the audience is experiencing the events along with the narrator • “Had you gone for a Sunday afternoon ride that day, you might have seen him, close to naked, standing on the shoulders of Route 424, waiting for a chance to cross.” The Swimmer, 1964 • Rare, used in third person point of view to allow the narrator to take an aside with the audience

Third Person Omniscient • Narrator knows/can reveal everything about a given character or situation • Intrusive • Adds moral commentary to the characters and events • Objective • Presence is merely implied, doesn’t add any opinions or commentary

Third Person Limited • Restricts POV to the understanding and experience of one/a few characters • Stream of Consciousness • Used to replicate the thought processes of a character • Little/no intervention by narrator • ex: Catcher in the Rye

Quiz! • “Had you gone for a Sunday afternoon ride that day you might have seen him, close to naked, standing on the shoulders of Route 424, waiting for a chance to cross. You might have wondered if he was the victim of foul play, had his car broken down, or was merely a fool” • “The Swimmer” by John Cheever

Quiz! • “The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it” • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Narrative Voice and Point of View