POINT OF VIEW

 

 

 

 

            Point of view is very tricky. A short story must achieve its effect in a very short space, and so, generally speaking, it needs to concentrate its focus on one character and his or her experience, his or her reaction to that experience, so that the reader will identify with that character. That character who "has" the story's point of view is our guide to the experience itself. Sticking with that character allows the writer to achieve a great deal of unity, whether the story is in first person or third. Keeping the story focused from within or upon one characters' consciousness makes all the other characters' motives and histories and personalities secondary to his or hers and important to the story only in regard to that protagonist. It allows the writer to create a language for the story's "voice" that will be derived from the circumstances of the protagonist; the images, the syntax, the diction will all be determined by, and will reflect, the consciousness of that character. Thus, in a short space, the writer can immerse his reader into many aspects of his character's personality at once.

           

            Naturally, there are exceptions to this general principle. Many stories have been written using omniscient point of view or  multiple points of view because the writers, knowing the effects they wanted to achieve, decided that a single point of view would be detrimental to those effects. For example, fables, allegories, and stories about dynamics or community mores -- "The Lottery," for instance -- are often written in a more "objective" or omniscient point of view because no individual's experience is measured as more important than any other's: they are all participating in the experience, and its significance is communal.

 

            For study of point of view:

 

            1. Read these three first-person stories from my collection: Child Guidance; Domestic Help; The Man With Unusual Luck. What do these narrators have in common as story-tellers? How do they differ?

 

            2. Read these third-person stories from the Norton Anthology: Barcelona (1), Wild Swans (403), Coach (466), and The Man From Mars (16). Though each story is narrated in third-person, how do these narrators differ?