Narrative Voice and Point of View Jenny Perez, Jasmine Pineda, and Patrick Smith

●Narration: act of telling a story o Narrator: one who is telling the story ●Forms of Narrative: o Novel, novella, short story ●Examples o Great Gatsby narrated by Nick Carraway o Adventures of Huckleberry Finn narrated by Huck Finn ●Identity always differs from that of the author’s because the narrator is their invention, in some sense Narrative Voice

Point of View ●Point of view can be identified by the pronoun that the narrator uses to recount events o “I,” and “We” for the first-person o “He,” “She,” or “They” for the third-person o “You” for the second-person

First Person ●Use of “I” or “We” ●Advantages: Immediacy and directness o Allows the reader to engage with the speaker o First-hand experiences ●Disadvantages: POV Limitations o The narrator can only relate to what he/she has witnessed ●Example: o “It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.” - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Second Person ●Narrator addresses the audience directly using the pronoun “You” o Assumes the audience is experiencing the events along with the narrator o “Had you gone for a Sunday afternoon ride that day, you might have seen him, close to naked, standing on the shoulders of Route 424, waiting for a chance to cross.” The Swimmer, 1964 o Rare, used in third person point of view to allow the narrator to take an aside with the audience

Third Person Omniscient ●Narrator knows/can reveal everything about a given character or situation ●Intrusive o Adds moral commentary to the characters and events ●Objective o Presence is merely implied, doesn’t add any opinions or commentary

Third Person Limited ●Restricts POV to the understanding and experience of one/a few characters ●Stream of Consciousness o Used to replicate the thought processes of a character o Little/no intervention by narrator  ex: Catcher in the Rye

Quiz! “Had you gone for a Sunday afternoon ride that day you might have seen him, close to naked, standing on the shoulders of Route 424, waiting for a chance to cross. You might have wondered if he was the victim of foul play, had his car broken down, or was merely a fool” -“The Swimmer” by John Cheever

Quiz! “The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it” -Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain