POINT OF VIEW
Part One, Fahrenheit 451
Barry 2010
POINT OF VIEW
The point of view of a novel is the perspective
from which it is told, or the perspective of the
narrator.
 A novel’s point of view affects how the
audience perceives the action of the story.
 You can think of point of view as a pair of
glasses through which the reader sees the
action of the story.

NARRATOR
The narrator of a novel is the person
telling the story.
 Sometimes the narrator is a character in
the story.
 Other times, the narrator is simply the
disembodied voice speaking the words on
the page.

FIRST PERSON
In first person narration, the protagonist (main
character) is telling the story.
 First person narration uses the pronoun “I.”
 When first person narration is used, the
reader only knows the thoughts and feelings of
the protagonist.

FIRST PERSON

Read this example of first person narration from The Great
Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald:
“I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous
feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the
constant flicker of men and women and
machines gives to the restless eye. I like to
walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic
women from the crowd and imagine that in a
few minutes I was going to enter their lives,
and no one would ever know or disapprove.”
SECOND PERSON
In second person narration, the narrator
directly addresses the reader.
 Second person narration uses the pronoun
“you.”
 Second person narration is used very rarely in
literature, but is used for instructions and howto guides.

SECOND PERSON
Read this example of second person narration
from Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City.
“You are not the kind of guy who would be at a
place like this at this time of the morning. But
here you are, and you cannot say that the
terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the
details are fuzzy.”

THIRD PERSON
In third person narration, the narrator is
separate from the protagonist, but the story is
told from the protagonist’s viewpoint.
 Third person narration uses the pronouns “he”
and “she” and the characters’ names.
 Third person narration is preferred for
academic writing, and is the most common
point of view for literature.

THIRD PERSON

Read this example of third person narration from The Scarlet
Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
“She saw her own face, glowing with girlish
beauty, and illuminating all the interior of the
dusky mirror in which she had been wont to
gaze at it.”
THIRD PERSON LIMITED


In third person limited narration, the narrator
only tells the thoughts and feelings of one
character.
Read this example from Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.
"Robert Jordan could walk well enough himself
and he knew from following him since before
daylight that the old man could walk him to
death. Robert Jordan trusted the man,
Anselmo, so far, in everything except
judgment.”
THIRD PERSON OMNISCIENT
In third person omniscient narration, the
narrator can describe the thoughts and
feelings of all characters.
 Thus, in the same novel, a book written from
third person omniscient point of view can be
written from the perspective of several
different characters.

THIRD PERSON OMNISCIENT

Read these two passages from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
“Exactly at midnight, when Anna was still sitting at her
desk finishing a letter to Dolly, she heard the
measured steps of slippered feet, and Alexei
Alexandrovich, washed and combed, a book under
his arm, came up to her.”
“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.”
CHANGING POINT OF VIEW

How could you rewrite this passage from a new point of view?
“He stood looking up at the air-conditioning vent in the
hall for a long time. His wife in the TV parlor paused
long enough from reading her script to glance up.”
I stood looking up at the vent for a long time. My wife
paused long enough from reading her script to glance
up.
For some reason my husband stared up at the airconditioning vent again. I paused in my reading to
glance up at him.