Text Analysis and History

1. Text Analysis and History Session Three: Point of View

2. Agenda • Repair Work: story, plot, character, and characterization • Plot in Winterson’s ”The 24-Hour Dog” • Point of view • Group work: Point of view in ”The Dead”

3. Repair Work • Story and plot • Character and characterization • Plot in Winterson’s ”The 24-Hour Dog”

4. An introduction to point of view • What do we study when we study point of view? • Whose ”version” of events are we presented with? • Why has the author decided to present us with that particular version? • How does he persuade us and about what by designing the point of view in a particular manner? • The creation of sympathy, antipathy

5. An introduction to point of view • Some competing terms: • Point of view • Perspective • Voice • Tone • Persona

6. First person points of view Third person points of view An introduction to point of view

7. First person points of view • Witness or minor participant: e.g., Dr Watson • Central character: e.g., Robinson Crusoe, Bridget Jones’s Diary,”The 24-Hour Dog” • The self-conscious narrator • The unreliable narrator

8. An Example: Lawrence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman ( •   Digressions, incontestably, are the sun- shine ; ---- they are the life, the soul of reading ; -- take them out of this book for instance, -- you might as well take the book along with them; -- one cold eternal winter would reign in every page of it ; restore them to the writer ; ---- he steps forth like a bridegroom, -- bids All hail ; brings in variety, and forbids the appe- tite to fail.

9. An Example: Sunday 19 March 8st 12, alchohol units 3, cigarettes 10, calories 2465 (but mainly chocolate). Hurray. Whole new positive perspective on birthday. Have been talking to Jude about book she has been reading about festivals and rites of passage in primitive cultures and am feeling happy and serene. (Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary, p. 81)

10. The intrusive point of view ”telling” The narrator comments and evaluates on events in his own voice The unintrusive point of view ”showing” The narrator describes and reports objectively The third person omniscient point of view

11. The third person limited point of view • The narrator limits himself to what is thought, felt, perceived, and remembered by a single character

12. An example: • Mr Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develope. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was disconcerted she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.” (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, p. 53)

13. An Example: • ”He did not complain. It was the way of life, and it was just. He had been born close to the earth, close to the earth had he lived, and the law thereof was not new to him. It was the law of all flesh. Nature was not kindly to the flesh. She had no concern for that conctrete thing called the individual. Her interest lay in the species, the race. This was the deepest abstraction old Koskoosh’s babaric mind was capable of, but he grasped it firmly. He saw it exemplified in all life.” (Jack London, ”The Law of Life”, p. 973-74)

14. An example: • ”Mrs Tulliver was what is called a good-tempered person – never cried when she was a baby, on any slighter ground than hunger and pins; and from the cradle upwards had been healthy, fair, plump, and dull witted; in short the flower of her family for beauty and amiability. But milk and mildness are not the best things for keeping, and when they turn only a little sour, they may disagree with young stomachs seriously.” (George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss) • 19th century, Victorianism, realism

15. An Example: • ”Charlie Stove waited until he heard his mother snore before he got out of bed. Even then he moved with caution and tiptoed to the window. The front of the house was irregular, so that it was possible to see a light burning in his mother’s room. But now all the windows were dark. A search-light passed across the sky, lighting the banks of cloud and probing the dark deep spaces between, seeking enemy airships. The wind blew from the sea, and Charlie Stowe could hear behind his mother’s snores the beating of the waves. A draught through the crack in the window-frame stirred his night-shirt. Charlie Stowe was frightened.” (Graham Greene, ”I Spy”, p. 534)

16. An Example • When the door had closed Charlie Stowe tiptoed upstairs and got into bed. He wondered why his father had left the house again so late at night and who the strangers were. Surprise and awe kept him for a little while awake. It was as if a familiar photograph had stepped from the frame to reproach him with neglect. He remembered how his father had held tight to his collar and fortified himself with proverbs, and he thought for the first time that, while his mother was boisterous and kindly, his father was very lilke himself, doing things in the dark which frightened him.” (Graham Green, ”I Spy”, p. 537)

17. James Joyce, ”The Dead” • Outline the points of view used in the short story. • Discuss the points of view and their thematic function