This document discusses narrative perspective and point of view. It provides definitions for heterodiegetic and homodiegetic narration, which refer to whether the narrator is part of the story world or separate from it. It also discusses focalization and how utilizing an attenuated focalization technique, where the point of view character's perspective is limited, can build suspense by withholding full details initially. Questions are then posed about applying these concepts to the provided short story excerpt, such as how the narrative perspective might differ if more concrete language replaced the attenuated focalization in the beginning.

2. It is the perspective through which a
story is told. Much of the feel, color or
texture of a story is a direct
consequence of the sort of narrative
framework it employs.

3. He rested his arms on the top of the wall and looked down the
fifty feet or so the tumbling white waters. Just upstream, the
river Loran piled down from the forest in a compactly furious
cataract. The spray was a taste. Beneath, the river surged round
the piers of the viaduct that carried the railway on towards
Lochgilpead and Gallanach.
A grey shape flitted silently across the view, from falls to bridge,
then zoomed, turned in the air and swept into the cutting on the
far bank of the river, as though as it was a soft fragment of the
train’s steam that had momentarily lost its way and was not
hurrying to catch up. He waited a moment, and the owl hooted
once, from inside the dark constituency of the forest. He smiled,
took a deep breath that tasted of steam and the sweet sharpness
of pine resin, and then turned away, and went back to pick up
his bags.
Iaian Banks, “The Crow Road”, 1993

4. • The distinction in a story between
who tells
and
who sees

5. This refers to the character when
we readers see what he sees as
shown in the gradual and
accumulative unfolding of the focal
points that are reflected in his
visual purview.

6. Heterodiegetic – when the narrator is different from the
exegesis (i.e. critical interpretation of the text) that
comprises the story
Homodiegetic – when the narrator is one who is internal to
the narrative, who is in the same plane of exegesis as the
story

7. He rested his arms on the top of the wall and looked down the
fifty feet or so the tumbling white waters. Just upstream, the
river Loran piled down from the forest in a compactly furious
cataract. The spray was a taste. Beneath, the river surged round
the piers of the viaduct that carried the railway on towards
Lochgilpead and Gallanach.
A grey shape flitted silently across the view, from falls to bridge,
then zoomed, turned in the air and swept into the cutting on the
far bank of the river, as though as it was a soft fragment of the
train’s steam that had momentarily lost its way and was not
hurrying to catch up. He waited a moment, and the owl hooted
once, from inside the dark constituency of the forest. He smiled,
took a deep breath that tasted of steam and the sweet sharpness
of pine resin, and then turned away, and went back to pick up
his bags.
Iaian Banks, “The Crow Road”, 1993

8. 1. Who tells the story?
2. Who sees the story?
3. Is the narrator heterodiegetic or
homodiegetic?
4. What is the effect of using the third
person point of view? Why not use the
first person instead?
5. What levels of language were involved in
the narrative?

9. 1. Semantic principle of deixis – works primarily by
situating the speaking voice in physical space
2. Grammatical Adjuncts which express location and
spatial relationship
*locative expression – used to cover grammatical units
which provide an index of location, direction and physical
setting in narrative description.
3. Attenuated focalization – a situation where point of view
is limited, even if temporarily, to an impeded or distanced
visual perspective though the use of lexical items.

10. What would be the effect if the writer
did not use attenuated focalization,
that instead of using an unspecific
lexical item like “shape”, he used the
more concrete term “owl” in the very
beginning?