《Employment of Various Points of ViewJ》.docVIP

Employment of Various Points of View In the basic aesthetic sense, POINT OF VIEW refers to angle of vision—the point from which the people, events and other details in a story are viewed and told in the novel. There can be many variations in point of view, but traditionally there have been two kinds: first person, and third person. In the first person point of view, the prevailing perspective is usually that of the major character-as-narrator—the narrator speaks as T and is him-/ herself a character in the story {David Copperfield; Catcher in the Rye). The choice of the major character-as-narrator (like Jane Eyre) produces a persona] relationship with the reader, which tends to bias the reader in favour of the narrator character. The third-person point of view has a narrator outside the story who refers to all characters in the story proper by name, or as he, she, they’. Such a point of view may be extremely broad — called the omniscient point of view as when the author decides to reveal the inner world of his/ her characters. In this kind of narrative the narrator/author knows all and reveals what he/she wishes. The narrator/author can even give direct comment on the action of the characters. Sometimes, however, the narrator/ author deliberately refrains from entering the minds of any of his/her characters and tells his/her tales as though it were a play taking place before his/ her eyes. In Bleak House, when recounting the death of Mr Tulkinghora, Dickens pretends that he does not know that the event has occurred, assuming the role of an onlooker (such as his reader): Whats that? Who fired a gun or pistol? Where was it? The use of questions is particularly dramatic. It can be an effective way to make direct appeal to the readers own experience. George Eliot invites her reader to share her insight: Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? —Middlemarch Some writers would choose