Point of View

1. Point of View

2. Questions to ask to determine a story’s POV 1.Who tells the story? First person pronouns: I me, mine, we, our, us Third person pronouns: he, she, they, their, it 2. How much knowledge does this person have? Ranges from total omniscience to purely objective 3. To what extent does the narrator look inside the characters and report their thoughts and feelings? omniscient and limited omniscient only

3. Point of view for both “A Rose for Emily” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” First person: the author selects (usually) a central character in the story to tell his or her own story. It is rare to have a minor character as narrator. Normally used are I, me, my, mine. The use of we, us, and our (the plural forms, as in “A Rose for Emily”) is also rare in fiction but can help to effect a gossip-like technique, so apparent in the Faulkner story) With this particular point of view the author can also create an unreliable voice, and heighten the sense of dramatic irony, as in “The Tell-tale Heart.” In dramatic irony the contrast is between what a character says or does and what the reader knows to be true.

4. Point of view’s Purpose One of the primary reasons for identifying a story’s point of view is to determine where the author stands in relation to the narrative. Behind the narrative voice of any story is the author, manipulating events and providing or withholding information. It is often a mistake to assume that the narrative voice of a story is the author. The narrator, whether a first person participant or a third person non-participant is a creation of the writer. A narrator’s perceptions may be accepted, rejected, or modified by an author, depending on how the narrative voice is articulated. The authors of your text use “narrator” in a wider sense to mean a “recording consciousness” that a author creates, who may or not be a participant in the events of the plot.

5. William Faulkner Edgar Allen Poe 1897-1962 Biography 1809-1849 Biography

6. William Faulkner on the Craft of Writing • "The writer's only responsibility is to his art. • He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. • He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must • get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything • goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, • happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer • has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; • the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any • number of old ladies." • (from Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, 1959)

7. Gothic Fiction Prominent features of gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical),*mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, *dilapidated houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, * death, *decay, *madness(especially mad women), *secrets, hereditary curses, persecuted maidens, *very old servants, *dusty chambers, * locked rooms, *claustrophobic conditions. *Properties of “A Rose for Emily”

8. Discussion prompt When asked what the title meant, Faulkner gave this rather enigmatic answer: “Oh. it’s simply that the poor woman had no life at all. Her father had kept her more or less locked up and then she had a lover who was about to quit her; she had to murder him. It was just ‘A Rose for Emily’---that’s all.” Is your interpretation of the title more lucid than his?

9. Discussion prompt In a lecture at the University of Virginia, Faulkner claimed that “A Rose for Emily” is a “ghost story.” However, since its publication in 1931, the story has been read variously as 1. a Gothic horror tale; 2. a study in abnormal psychology, 3. an allegory of the relations between the North and the South, 4. a meditation on the nature of time; 5. a tragedy, with Emily as a sort of tragic heroine. What are your thoughts on the story’s meaning?

10. Discussion prompts Of the numerous literary critics who have analyzed this story, many agree that Faulkner selected an effective narrative voice-- one that lacks complete information about Emily’s path to reclusivity--to further heighten the mystery and suspense. What are your thoughts about the point of view? Would another choice have had the same effect? Tobe’s? The baptist minister’s? Her cousins’? The pharmacist's? Critic Michael Burduck goes so far as to postulate that the narrator is female, not male (the default choice for many others). Any thoughts on this?

11. A logical narrative order would have us see Emily buying poison Homer disappearing 3. The odor of his decaying body • The unconventional narrative method, which makes • the surprise more dramatic, has us see • 1. The odor of his decaying body • 2. Emily buying poison 3. Homer disappearing

12. Section I Time frame: 1894: death of her father; 1926 officials try to collect taxes; she’s in her late thirties Section II Time frame: 2 years after father’s death, 1896: terrible smell reported; townspeople sense she is not right in the head: “father is not dead” Section III Time frame: 1895-96: Homer appears; cousins come to visit; she buys the “rat poison” Section IV Time frame: 1896; preparation for marriage; Homer’s last appearance alive; chronology becomes more straightforward Section V Time frame: in the present; bedroom scene with shocking double revelations

13. Each section effectively moralizes about the protagonist I’ve juxtaposed Faulkner’s five adjectives from par. 51, bottom of p. 37 Section I: we see her eccentric pertinacity overcoming changing values (“dear” to the townspeople) Section II: we see her spinsterhood and anger at her father’s death; this arouses some pity but intensifies the sense of oddness; (the smell is “inescapable”) Section III: we see her courting Homer (a Yankee laborer) and buying the arsenic; this elicits gasps of scandal and shows the same steely determination of section I (“impervious”) Section IV: we see her pathetic situation as a jilted woman, her increasing seclusion, her demise; the reader sees her as a figure of sentimental sympathy that gradually moves out of the picture (“tranquil”) Section V: the narrator springs the trap; the long held secrets are divulged, creating horror and disgust (“perverse”)

15. Edgar Allan Poe on the singularity of effect “A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents--he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction.” From A Review of Twice Told Tales, May 1842

16. Discussion question: In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” do you think he practiced what he preached? Explain

17. Discussion question: What can a reader detect from the narrator’s telling of the tale that leads to a heightening of the story’s dramatic irony? DRAMATIC IRONY: The contrast is between what a character (narrator) says and does and what a reader knows to be true

18. Subsequent manfestations of narrator’s madness: (after paragraph 1) perception of the old man’s eye as a thing in itself. independent of its admittedly benevolent possessor his extreme attention to details and matters that others could find insignificant his fixation on a single object for an insanely long period of time his need to flaunt his own brillance, even if only to himself, by inviting the officers into the house

19. Discussion questions: Regarding paragrahs 10 and 17 and the line “there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as when a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.” (In par. 17 it is in italics) Is it his own heart that the narrator hears? or Is it the manifestation of his own guilty conscience?

20. FIN