Narrative Essay Point of View Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

A point of view analysis essay might discuss the effect a particular point of view has on a story. The first person narrator relays the story using i, showing the reader what he is seeing and experiencing throughout the story. This narrator is typically the main character, but he can also be a supporting character. The third person narrator relays the story using he or she, showing the reader a broader perspective. Third person narration may be limited to a particular character, revealing only his thoughts, actions and/or feelings or omniscient, relaying many characters’ thoughts, actions and/or feelings. To write a point of view analysis essay, you should read the literary narrative and take notes on the writer's use of point of view. Relaying the story from another perspective would make a completely different story.

As a result, in analyzing point of view, it is particularly important to pay close attention to the effect that a narrative's point of view has on various aspects of the story and on the story as a whole. Your analysis of a narrative's point of view should be conveyed in one sentence, a thesis statement, which is typically found at the end of your essay's introductory paragraph. The thesis statement should relay your main argument about the writer’s use of point of view and what effect that has on some other aspect of the narrative. For example, you might notice that a first person perspective might be too limiting because it only presents one character's feelings.

As a result, you might conclude that this style of narration gives the story a certain kind of immediacy or tension. In english, is professor emeritus of rhetoric and english at armstrong atlantic state university and the author of two grammar and composition textbooks for college freshmen, writing exercises macmillan and passages: a writer 39 s guide st. point of view is the perspective from which a speaker or writer recounts a narrative or presents information. Also see: 34 point of view is the place from which a writer listens in and watches. Choosing one place over another determines what can and can 39 t be seen, what minds can and can 39 t be entered. 34 the main choice of course is between the third and first person, between a disembodied voice and 39 i 39 in nonfiction synonymous with the author.

Some writers feel obliged to use the third person, by tradition the voice of objectivity, the disinterested mode of address appropriate for the newspaper or for history. Other writers, by contrast, seem to adopt the first person as a reflex, even if they are not writing autobiographically. But choosing a point of view really is a choice, fundamental to the construction of nonfiction narratives and carrying serious consequences. No moral superiority inheres in the first or third person, in their many varieties, but the wrong choice can deaden a story or distort it enough to turn it into a lie, sometimes a lie composed of facts. Random house, 2013 subjective and objective viewpoints 34 pronouns reflect the various viewpoints. You can choose first person i, me, us, our , second person you , or third person he, she, they, their .

It is the favored point of view for instructional material, advice, and sometimes admonishment! it is intimate without being intense unless the 39 voice 39 of the author is authoritarian or controlling instead of instructive. For instance, when used for an 39 as told to 39 personal experience essay, third person is subjective and warm. Perigee, 2003 continue reading below the first person narrator 34 it 39 s hard to write a memoir or a personal essay without falling back on the 39 i. 39 in fact, all nonfiction is really told in the technical first person point of view. There is always a narrator doing the telling, and the narrator is not some fictional persona but the author. 34 this single point of view is one of the important and frustrating hallmarks that distinguishes nonfiction from fiction.

34 yet there are ways to mimic other points of view and thereby to tell a more natural sort of story. 34 listen to the opening lines of daniel bergner 39 s god of the rodeo. 39 when he had finished work building fence or penning cattle or castrating bull calves with a knife supplied by his boss on the prison farm johnny brooks lingered in the saddle shed. The small cinder block building is near the heart of angola, louisiana 39 s maximum security state penitentiary.