Chapter 11: "The Voice of a Story: Point of View"
POV, or Point of View, describes one of those areas of creative writing for which you will find plenty of--and often contradictory-- information. So read with care.
As you will come to find by experimenting with your own writing and reading that of others, determining which point of view to utilize describes an often complicated process, for the decision rests on what you seek to achieve in your story.
As your text explains, you have to work with the characters and the conflicts to determine which approach works best for you and for your goals, whether you write a short story about a young girl's perspective on her "odd" uncle or a fable about a daft dog.
You have this term read a number of narratives and ones with a variety of points of view. Reading the stories as a writer, as this class has demonstrated, opens up new avenues of enjoyment and enquiry for you. Now you can ponder, for example, questions about why an author chose a particular point of view.
As your authors note, "The term point of view does not refer to the writer's attitude or opinion toward the subject. Rather, it is a technical device the writer uses: every story is told by a voice, and that voice and the way the author uses it to tell the story make up the story's point of view." Each of the various points of view, moreover, "has certain advantages and certain limitations."
But the central concern when determining your specific choice of POV always has as its objective: "Telling the story so that the reader experiences the protagonist's central experience."
Thus, if, for example, you want in your story to focus on a character's personal revelations regarding a past experience that bears a great deal on present circumstances, you might choose the First Person Point of View, for this perspective allows you to emphasize with wonderful drama the progression, psychological and experiential.
In First Person, the dynamic tension has generally to do with the tension between the experienced narrator, who tells the tale, and the experiencing character. This tension informs the conflict.
And we generally accept and put trust in the first person narrator. For this reason, while the perspective is limited to only the one person and what that person knows and learns, the First Person generates tremendous power:
"Because you thrust the reader's imagination into the body, head, experiences, and emotions of the character within the story who tells the story, with all the trappings and accents and flaws and strengths and weaknesses of that character's voice."
Well, the first person does offer a dynamic way to tell a story. And we as readers like "I" a lot, and for obvious reasons: we readily trust, as a rule, what a narrator has to say, until, that is to say, the character's actions or insights jar us. In this case, we have what Wayne Booth characterizes as an "unreliable narrator."
Well, this term does cause some problems, as I suggest in previous notes. The most common cause has to do not with intent but with carelessness on the part of a writer. Thus, when a writer does not present the character in a consistent manner, the unreliability has to do with flawed writing and not a dissimulating or naive narrator.
To that end, remember that you write about what you know best, which is why writers such as Jonas Agee talk so much about research.
An unreliable narrator is consistent; however, our views do not square always with the opinions of the person telling the story. Thus, in Wuthering Heights, we learn all about Heathcliff, Catherine, and others from Lockwood, who hears the story from Nell. And we come to realize that both these "filters" (the story comes through them), especially Lockwood, have their own point of view, which limits in significant ways, therefore, their appreciation of the lovers Heathcliff and Catherine.
On the other hand, Lockwood and Nell remain consistent in their perspective, so we can trust them both.
From the perspective of a short story, consider John Updike's "A & P," (which you read and discussed last week), a wonderful first-person account of the recent experience of a young man who quits his work at the store to make a point, one that the immature person who tells the story does not fully appreciate.
In other words, we might not share Sammy's perceptions, but we find the character interesting, even though we feel that the young man has a great deal to learn before he becomes Sam.
Take the time to read the story again and consider just how "heroic" his action actually is and how immature is this intelligent fellow's conclusion:
I look around for my girls, but they're gone, of course. There wasn't anybody but some young married screaming with her children about some candy they didn't get by the door of a powder-blue Falcon station wagon. Looking back in the big windows, over the bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, checking the sheep through. His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he'd just had an injection of iron, and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.
The "I" in this case, does not learn much at all, for the style and the insights suggest that the story gets told soon after the incident. What compels then is the character of Sammy, his insights and his assertions, for we identify with them, though we might look down a bit on the young man for all that he has to learn, for what he does not know.
This "how much does he know" describes, in fact, what unites both First Person and Third Person Limited accounts: the perspective remains the same in some respects between the "I" and the "he or she" of a narrative. How much will, for instance, the author reveal about the character?
Consider another story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been," by Joyce Carol Oats, one your authors discuss and that you had a chance to read last week. In this story, we have a character a lot like Sammy, immature and self interested. Oats, however, tells the story using a Third Person Limited point of view: we see most of the story through the young Connie's eyes:
Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right. Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything and who hadn't much reason any longer to look at her own face, always scolded Connie about it. "Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you're so pretty?" she would say. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar old complaints and look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything. Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie.
Her story will not have the ironic twists Sammy's account accents; instead, her weakness will result in tragedy. Thus while both narratives use very different points of view, their protagonists have a great deal in common.
We experience Sammy's grocery-store exploits along with him and understand his conclusions, though we might not agree with them. Connie, on the other hand, cannot tell her story: she probably does not survive her encounter with her new friend.
As previously noted, the circumstances, the characters, and your goals all help determine the chosen point of view.
The "limited" in "Third Person Limited" in your text's discussion has to do with your limiting yourself to going into the head, so to speak, of only one character, especially in a short story:
"The writer chooses to listen in on one character's thoughts, to see things from that character's vantage point in the story."
And you always have to ask yourself, how much does this character know?
You need not for our purposes in this class concern yourself with the Objective Point of View, the so-called "fly and the wall" perspective: "The objective point of view is characterized by its showing the audience only what the characters look like, say, or do."
For a good example of this approach, see John Steinbeck's "The Chrysanthemums," a much- anthologized story, as is Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants." But one often overlooked practitioner of this approach is Dashiel Hammett, writer of hard-boiled detective fiction. In his Sam Spade stories, the reader sees and hears through Spade eyes, but we never enter his mind, so he can and often does withhold information.
For your own stories, remember the importance of consistency. Write about your characters with honesty and do not fear changing point of view.
We often change our opinions.
This page has been visited 1,840 times since 12/09/2007
| http://www.hpcnet.org/peru/schoolartsandsciences/language/clemente/fall2006/creative/8/pov | Last Modified: 10/10/2011 |