Perspective (Point of View)

1. Perspective(Point of View)

2. What is Point of View • Point of view tells you who is telling the story and whether or not they were involved in it.

3. 3 Types • 1st Person • 2nd Person • 3rd Person

4. First Person • The teller of the story is directly involved in it. • Uses words like I, Me, My, Mine, Ours, We Ex: I was minding my own business when Mom burst in. “What’s with you?” I grumbled.

5. Second Person • The narrator talks to you, the reader • Uses the words you and your Ex: First, you need to get rid of your attitude.

6. Third Person • The person telling the story is an outsider who’s just watching stuff happen; he/she is not involved in it. • Uses words like they, them, he, she, their, his, her Ex: He had no idea what she was thinking, and it was probably better off that way.

7. Three Types of Third Person • Objective • Limited • Omniscient

8. Third Person Objective • Objective means you don’t take sides in an argument • Third Person Objective is when the narrator reports what he/she sees, but doesn’t know anyone’s thoughts or feelings (can’t get in the characters’ heads) • Ex: She looked at him with sadness, and he walked away.

9. Third Person Limited • The narrator knows ONE character’s thoughts and feelings, but no one else’s. Ex: She looked at him with sadness, thinking he just didn’t care, and he proved her right when he simply walked away.

10. Third Person Omniscient • The narrator knows ALL (“omni=all”) thoughts and feelings for every character. Ex: She looked at him with sadness, thinking he just didn’t care, and he proved her right when he simply walked away. “She’s freakin’ crazy,” he thought, shaking his head.

11. Assignment • Number your paper from 1-10. • For each example, write either 1, 2, Obj, L, or Omni • This will be worth a grade, so take it seriously • Remember with 3rd Person to ask yourself: -Does the narrator know any thoughts or feelings? -If he does, are they everyone’s thoughts or just the thoughts of one person?

12. 1. • The room is lit from the combination of eight overhead classroom-style lights and the white painted walls. The room, probably near 300 square feet, is entirely used up to enhance learning. Tables are set in a U-shape with orange chairs facing the green "blackboard". 15 students sit facing the professor.

13. 2. • As the old man entered the room, he had a strange sense of homesickness. The flickering lights and mono-colored white walls reminded him so much of the hospital room he spent so much time in, that he will enter no longer. The hard, ugly colored orange chairs felt familiar and he did not seem bothered by them. The U-shaped table left him shaking, waiting for the next bit of news he knows cannot be good.

14. 3. • As the lights turn on, the room is aglow with the bright combination of white walls and tabletops and a green chalkboard. The orange padded chairs are not being used to the full potential, as the students sit on the edge of their chairs. Constant movement stirs through the room, from shifting of body parts to the rattling of finders on the tables. The U-shaped tables create an atmosphere of one on one contact, with each student facing the professor.

15. 3 • She was sure there was someone following her. She walked faster, but the sense of foreboding closed in around her like a cold hand clenching around her spine. When she turned to look behind her, the street was deserted.

16. 4 • Like all cities, Wilmington is rich in places and poor in others, and since my dad had one of the steadiest, solid-citizen jobs on the planet -- he drove a mail delivery route for the post office -- we did okay. Not great, but okay. We weren't rich, but we lived close enough to the rich area for me to attend one of the best high schools in the city. Unlike my friends' homes, though, our house was old and small; part of the porch had begun to sag, but the yard was its saving grace. There was a big oak tree in the backyard, and when I was eight years old, I built a tree house with scraps of wood I collected from a construction site. My dad didn't help me with the project (if he hit a nail with a hammer, it could honestly be called an accident); it was the same summer I taught myself to surf. I suppose I should have realized then how different I was from my dad, but that just shows how little you know about life when you're a kid.

17. 5 • Sometimes, if you look hard enough, you will discover indications that the second-person narrator is not supposed to be you the reader. You will likely want to ask why the author of such a work would dare try to make you identify that intimately with a second-person narrator who is, um, not you. But you probably will never ask the question aloud because the person you want to ask isn't there. How can you speak your piece when you have no one to tell it to? Talking to yourself would make you look crazy, so you'll just have to leave it an internal monologue for now.

18. 6 • The house was big, old, and Levin, though he lived alone, heated and occupied all of it. He knew that it was even wrong and contrary to his new plans, but this house was a whole world for Levin. It was the world in which his father and mother had lived and died. They had lived a life which for Levin seemed the ideal of all perfection and which he dreamed of renewing with his wife, with his family.

19. 7 • You walk about the cabin. Hearing a noise, you peer out the window, but you see nothing. Out loud, you say, "It's Probably Nothing," but your voice is shaky. The light silhouettes you perfectly in the window.

20. 8 • As the girl walked up the hill, she realized that the atmosphere was just too quiet. • The cardinal tipped his head back and drew breath to sing, but just as the first note passed his beak he heard the crack of a dead branch far below his perch high in the maple tree. Startled, he looked down, cocking his head to one side and watching with great interest while the man rattled the blades of grass as he tried to hide himself behind the tree.

21. 9 The man stepped on the branch and rattled the blades of grass as he moved behind the tree. He watched the girl come up the hillside toward him. Her gaze shifted quickly and warily from one shadowy area high on the slope to another, and she shuddered.

22. 10 • As I walked up the hill, I realized that the atmosphere was just too quiet. There was no sound from the cardinal who was nearly always singing from the top of the maple tree. I thought I saw a shadow move high up on the slope, but when I looked again it was gone. Still, I shuddered as I felt a silent threat pass over me like a cloud over the sun.