This presentation is about Point Of View (P.O.V)

2.  The term “point of view” has many
applications, from video game development
to the interpretation of art.
 When studying the perspective of the
narrator, the reader is concerned with the
relationship between the person telling the
story (the narrator) and the agents
referred to by the story teller (the
characters).

3.  There are six key terms used in the study
of narrative view point:
 First-person,
 Second-person,
 Third-person,
 Third-person objective,
 Third-person limited, and
 Third-person omniscient.

4.  Each term refers to a specific mode of
narration defined by two things:
the distance of the narrator from the story
(the pronoun case) and
how much the narrator reveals about the
thoughts and feelings of the characters
(narrative access).

5.  In this mode, the narrator is usually the protagonist or central
character in the story. But even if this character is not the
protagonist, he or she is directly involved in the events of the
story and is telling the tale “first hand.”
 First-person narration is easy to identify, because the narrator
will be telling the story from “I’s” perspective. Readers should
watch for the narrator’s use of first-person pronouns- “I, me, my,
our, us, we, myself, and ourselves,” as these will usually indicate
that the passage is narrated from first-person perspective.
 Remember, with this skill readers are trying to identify the
perspective of the narrator; therefore, one must ignore the
dialogue of characters (indicated by “quotation marks”) and solely
focus on narration, otherwise one is not analyzing the
narrator’s point of view.

6.  In this mode of narration “you” are the agent, such as
in this example: you walked down the stairs. As it is
generally awkward for a story to be narrated from
“your” perspective, this mode of narration is not used
very often in narratives and stories.
 There are some exceptions, however, and second-
person perspective is the primary mode of narration
for similarly styled writings.
 More frequently, directions and instructions are
usually narrated from second-person perspective.
 In most cases, directions will be written in short
imperative sentences, where the implied subject is
“you.” But even when “you” is not explicitly stated, it is
understood that “you” are the subject of directions and
instructions.

7.  With this mode of narration, the narrator tells
the story of another person or group of people.
The narrator may be far removed from or not
involved in the story. He or she may be a
supporting character supplying narration for a
hero.
 Frequent use of “he, she, them, they, him, her,
his, her, and their” by the narrator may
indicate that a passage is narrated from third-
person perspective.
 There are three distinct modes of third-
person narration:
 objective,
 limited, and
 omniscient.

8.  Which mode the narrator is using is
determined by a single variable –
 How much the narrator accesses the thoughts,
feelings, and internal workings of the characters
and shares them with the reader through
narration.
 Characters’ feelings and motivations can be
inferred and understood through their behaviour
and dialogue in each of the three modes of third-
person narration; however, in determining which
mode the narrator is operating, the readers
should be concerned with finding instances where
the narrator explicitly reveals a character’s
thoughts or feelings.

9.  In this mode of narration, the narrator tells a
third-person’s story (he, she, him, her), but the
narrator only describes characters’ behaviour and
dialogue.
 The narrator does not reveal any character’s
thoughts or feelings. Again, readers will be able
to understand characters’ thoughts and
motivations based on characters’ actions and
dialogue, which are narrated; however, the
narrator will not explicitly reveal character’s
thoughts and/or motivations in narration.

10.  When a narrator uses third-person limited
perspective, the narrator’s perspective is
limited to the internal workings of one
character. In other words, the narrator
reveals the thoughts and feelings of one
character through explicit narration. As with
objective narration, readers may be able to
infer characters’ thoughts and feelings based
on the behaviours and dialogue of those
characters, which are narrated, but the
narrator also directly reveals the central
character’s internal perspective.

11.  In this mode of narration, the narrator grants
readers the most access to characters’
thoughts and feelings.
 With third-person omniscient narration, the
narration will reveal more than one
characters’ internal workings.
 The base word omni means “all,” and scient
means “knowing,” so omniscient roughly
translates to “all knowing.” In this case, the
etymology is accurate, because in omniscient
narration, the narrator is all knowing.

12.  Read the following passages and
determine the narrative perspective,
then explain how you were able to
identify the point of view- if the
passage is third person, explain which
character’s thoughts are revealed.

13. Sideways Stories from Wayside School
by Louis Sachar
Leslie sat in front of Paul. She had two
long, brown pigtails that reached all the
way down to herterrible urge came over
him. He wanted to pull a pigtail. He wanted
to wrap his fist around it, feel the hair
between his fingers, and just yank. He
thought it would be fun to tie the pigtails
together, or better yet, tie them to her
chair. But most waist. Paul saw those
pigtails, and a of all, he just wanted to pull
one.

14. Invitation to the Game by Monica Hughes
And we scrounged. Next to survival, scrounge
was probably the most important word in our
new vocabulary. We found a store that was
throwing out water-damaged mattresses.
Getting them home was a problem, since we had
to make two trips, leaving Brad and Katie,
armed with sticks to guard over the remained.
I truly expected them to be challenged by
some gang boss, but they said that the only
person who came by was a scrawny little rat of
a girl living alone. We let her have one of the
mattresses.

15. Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
At dawn, Mae Tuck set out on her horse for
the wood at the edge of the village of
Treegap. She was going there, as she did
once every ten years, to meet her two sons,
Miles and Jesse, and she was feeling at
ease. At noon time, Winnie Foster, whose
family owned the Treegap wood, lost her
patience at last and decided to think about
running away.