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    Level: (hard)

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    EXPLAINING A TEXT: Point of view and Narrative technique

     

    Point of view can be defined as the angle from which the story is seen and recounted.

    Narrative technique refers to the medium used to tell the story.

     

    I) Third-person point-of-view

    - The omniscient narrator assumes that the author knows everything about the story and the characters. He controls the story and sometimes breaks into the narrative to address the reader directly. The writer thus establishes complicity with the reader but the narrative lacks the immediacy of immediate point of view.

    - Multiple character focus: the concealed narrator is given access to the consiousness of various characters and participates in their thoughts. He does not call attention to his presence by intrusive comment and creates the illusion that the characters are free to speak for themselves.

    - Single character focus: the narrator is effaced and the narration is shifted to a major character who registers and evaluates what happens around him and within himself. This point of view approaches the immediacy of the first person.

    - No specific character focus: when the author presents his story without penetrating the feelings or thoughts of any character. He plays the part of a simple informer. objective fiction is common in modern fiction.

     

    > Third-person narrative techniques: narration / indirect speech / semi-indirect speech / direct speech...

     

    II) First-person points of view.

    - Objective autobiography: the I narrator is the central character grown older and more mature. Distance in time detaches him from the past events he recounts. This splitting of the character into "I now/narrator" and "I then/subject" permits objectivity (cf. Dickens - Great Expectations)

    - Subjective autobiography: the central character tells the story as it happens and is deeply involved in the events and their consequences. Subjectivity often results from the absence of time gap between telling and happening: the narrator tends to distort facts to defend his side of the story. (cf. Huckleberry Finn)

    - Observer narration: a minor character may be used to relate the experience of the major character. He may be an inner observer who plays a role in the action or an outer observer. He may be the confidant of one of the protagonists or an eyewitness to the action (cf Nick in The Great Gatsby).

     

    > First-person narrative techniques: the narrator may present events and thoughts as a diary or as a straight autobiography. He may resort to interior monologue in which he reviews past events associated with present commentary. The stream of consciousness depicts the impressions and thoughts which flow freely through the mind of a character with no apparent logic.

     

    III) Time-sequence

    The time-sequence of a story is important. The traditional mode is the chronological order, but the time-sequence may be broken. The reader is confronted with flashbacks or anticipations (foreshadowing).

    One may be struck by the frequency of certain happenings or recurring keywords. There may be a shift of focus from one character to another.