CREATIVE NONFICTION:

POINT OF VIEW

By: Group 5
 Point of View
 Is the perspective that a narrative takes toward
the events it describes.
 Is the angle of considering things, which shows

us the opinion or feelings of the individuals

involved in a situation. In literature, point of
view is the mode of narration that an author
employs to let the readers “hear” and “see”
what takes place in a story, poem, or essay.
 3 Major Kinds of Point of
View

 First Person
 Second Person

 Third Person
 First Person Narration
 A narrative in which the narrator tells the story
from his/her point of view and refers to
him/herself as “I.” The narrator may be and
active participant in the story or just an observer.
When the point of view represented specifically
the author’s and not a fictional narrator’s, the
story is Autobiographical and may be
nonfictional.
 Hamlet by William shakespear
 Hamlet, the protagonist, explains
the feeling of melancholy that
afflicts him after his father’s death:
 “I have of late, — but
wherefore I know not, — lost all my
mirth, forgone all custom of
exercises; and indeed, it goes so
heavily with my disposition that this
goodly frame, the earth, seems to
me a sterile promontory.”
 Daffodils by William
Wordsworth
 “I gazed – and gazed – but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.”
 The Sun also Rises By Ernest
Hemingway
 “I could picture it. I have a
habit of imagining the
conversations between my
friends. We went out to the
Cafe Napolitain to have an
aperitif and watch the evening
crowd on the Boulevard.”
 Second Person Narration

 is a point of view (how a story is told) where the

narrator tells the story to another character using
the word 'you.' The author could be talking to the
audience, which we could tell by the use of 'you,'
'you're,' and 'your.' In fiction, second person is used
as a narrative voice, a term used for the method in
which a narrator describes the story.
 Bright Lights, Big City by Jay
Mclnemey
“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.”
 Lust by Susan Minot

“You wonder how long you

can keep it up. You begin to
feel as if you’re showing
through, like a bathroom
window that only lets in grey
light, the kind you can’t see
out of.”
 Third Person Narration

 The narrator remains outside the story and

describes the characters in the story using proper
names and third person pronouns “he” “she”
“it”, and “they”.
OMNISCIENT NARRATION
knows all of the actions,
feelings and motivations of all the
characters.
 The Scarlet Letter (By Nathaniel Hawthorne)
The narrator in Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet
Letter, is an omniscient one, who
scrutinizes the characters, and
narrates the story in a way that
shows the readers that he has more
knowledge about the characters
than they have about themselves.
Though the narrator is an omniscient
one, he is also a subjective narrator,
meaning the readers form their own
opinions about the things that take
place.
 Da Vinci Code (By Dan Brown)
Dan Brown, in his novel Da Vinci
Code, uses omniscient narrative,
and employs several characters to
speak in front of the audience,
demonstrating what each
character thinks and sees. Also the
narrator provides information
about background and related
knowledge that characters are
unaware of.
 Little Women (By Louisa May Alcott)
“Margaret, the eldest of the four, was
sixteen, and very pretty, being plump
and fair, with large eyes, plenty of soft
brown hair, a sweet mouth, and white
hands, of which she was rather vain.
Fifteen-year-old Jo was very tall, thin,
and brown, and reminded one of a colt
… Elizabeth, or Beth, as everyone called
her, was a rosy, smooth-haired, bright-
eyed girl of thirteen, with a shy manner, a
timid voice, and a peaceful expression,
which was seldom disturbed … “
Little Women (By Louisa May Alcott)

Alcott uses an omniscient narrator, as

we hear a disembodied voice knowing
everyone’s feelings and thoughts,
exploring all characters from inside and
out. Here, the narrator gives a
description of the March sisters.
LIMITED OMNISCIENT NARRATION

knows the actions, feelings, and

motivations of only one or a handful of
characters.
 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Alcott uses an omniscient
narrator, as we hear a
disembodied voice knowing
everyone’s feelings and
thoughts, exploring all
characters from inside and
out. Here, the narrator gives
a description of the March
sisters.
FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE
conveys a character’s inner
thoughts while staying in the third
person
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

“Sometimes she
thought that these were
after all the best days
of her life, the
honeymoon so called.”
OBJECTIVE NARRATION

A style in which the narrator

reports neutrally on the outward
behavior of the characters but offers
no interpretation of their actions or
their inner thoughts.
 Hansel and Gretel by Jacob and
Wilhelm Grimm

 “Hansel walked ahead

of Gretel. Gretel
dropped breadcrumbs
behind her as she went.
 Ahead of them, an old

witch waited.”
UNRELIABLE NARRATION
The narrator is revealed
over time to be an untrustworthy
source of information.
 Yann Martel’s novel The Life of Pi

 readers wonder
increasingly about the
truth of events
described by the
narrator.
 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

 Nabokov's unreliable narrators

manipulate the events within their
novels. The
narrators' unreliability ends up
revealing the nature of the reader
more than the nature of the narrator.
... In Lolita, Humbert
Humbert purposefully manipulates
events in order to make the reader
feel sympathy for him.
 STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
NARRATION
The narrator conveys a subjects
thoughts, impressions, and perceptions
exactly as they occur, often in disjoined
fashion and without the logic and
grammar of typical speech and writing.
 Ulysses (By James Joyce)
 “He is young Leopold, as in a
retrospective arrangement, a
mirror within a mirror (hey,
presto!), he beholdeth himself.
That young figure of then is seen,
precious manly, walking on a
nipping morning from the old
house in Clambrassil to the high
school, his book satchel on him
bandolier wise, and in it a goodly
hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother’s
thought.”
 Mrs. Dalloway (By Virginia Woolf)
“What a lark! What a plunge! For so it
always seemed to me when, with a little
squeak of the hinges, which I can hear
now, I burst open the French windows and
plunged at Bourton into the open air. How
fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course,
the air was in the early morning; like the
flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill
and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen
as I then was) solemn, feeling as I did,
standing there at the open window, that
something awful was about to happen …”
 Sources:
 Literary Devices.net
 Study.com

 Sir Shafiq’s Copy about Point of View