ENH 110 Point of View:

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ENH 110 Point of View First Person
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Questions to ask to determine a storys POV
1.Who tells the story?
2. How much knowledge does this person have?
3. To what extent does the narrator look inside
the characters and report their thoughts and
feelings?
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Point of view for both A Rose for Emily and
The Tell-Tale Heart
First person the author selects (usually) a
central character in the story to tell his or her
own story. Although he or she may also be a
minor character. First person pronouns I,
me---we, us, and our (the plural forms, as in A
Rose for Emily,are rare in fiction but can help
to effect a gossip-like technique, so apparent
in the Faulkner story)
With this particular point of view the author can
create an unreliable voice, and heighten the
sense of dramatic irony, as in The Tell-tale
Heart.
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William Faulkner
Edgar Allen Poe
1897-1962 Biography
1809-1849 Biography
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Gothic Fiction
Prominent features of gothic fiction include
terror (both psychological and physical),
mystery, the supernatural, ghosts,
dilapidated houses and Gothic architecture,
castles, darkness, death, decay, madness
(especially mad women), secrets, hereditary
curses, persecuted maidens, very old servants,
dusty chambers, locked rooms,
claustrophobic conditions.
Properties of A Rose for Emily
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• A logical narrative order would have us see
• Emily buying poison
• Homer disappearing
• 3. The odor of his decaying body

• The unconventional narrative method, which makes
• the surprise more dramatic, has us see
• 1. The odor of his decaying body
• 2. Emily buying poison
• 3. Homer disappearing

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A Rose for Emily Structure
Section I Time frame 1894 death of her father
1926 officials try to collect taxes shes in her
late thirties
Section II Time frame 2 years after fathers
death, 1896 rotting sweetheart reported
townspeople sense she is not right in the head
father is not dead
Section III Time frame 1895-96 Homer appears
cousins come to visit she buys the rat poison
Section IV Time frame 1896 preparation for
marriage Homers last appearance alive
chronology becomes more straightforward
Section V Time frame in the present shocking
bedroom scene
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Each section effectively moralizes about the
protagonist
Section I we see her eccentric pertinacity
overcoming changing values
Section II we see her spinsterhood and madness
at her fathers death this arouses some pity
but intensifies the sense of oddness
Section III we see her courting Homer (a Yankee
laborer) and buying the arsenic this elicits
gasps of scandal and shows the same steely
determination of section I
Section IV we see her pathetic situation as a
jilted woman, her increasing seclusion, her
demise the reader sees her as a figure of
sentimental sympathy that gradually moves out of
the picture
Section V the narrator springs the trap the
long held secrets are divulged, creating horror
and disgust
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Possible theme for A Rose for Emily
If the spirit of youthful exuberance is unable to
find release due to the forces of
oppressiveness, its energy may later manifest
itself in a need to be secluded and in a steadily
evolving eccentric pertinacity that at once may
evoke pity and horror--both shrouded by the
mystery inherent in reclusivity.
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IRONY IN FICTION
VERBAL IRONY THE DISCREPANCY IS BETWEEN WHAT IS
SAID AND WHAT IS MEANT.
DRAMATIC IRONY THE CONTRAST IS BETWEEN WHAT A
CHARACTER SAYS AND WHAT THE READER KNOWS TO BE
TRUE.
SITUATIONAL IRONY THE DISCREPANCY IS BETWEEN
APPEARANCE AND REALITY, BETWEEN EXPECTATION AND
FULFILLMENT, BETWEEN WHAT IS AND WHAT WOULD SEEM
APPROPRIATE.
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Subsequent manfestations of narrators madness
(after paragraph
1) perception of the old mans eye as a thing in
itself. independent of its admittedly benevolent
possessor his extreme attention to details and
matters that others could find insignificant
being not irrelevant his fixation on a single
object for an insanely long period of time his
need to flaunt his own brillance, even if only
to himself, by inviting the officers into the
house
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Discussion questions
Regarding paragrahs 10 and 17 and the
line there came to my ears a low, dull, quick
sound, such as when a watch makes when enveloped
in cotton. (In par. 17 it is in italics)
Is it his own heart that the narrator
hears? or Is it the manifestation of his own
guilty conscience?
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Discussion question
Regarding paragrah 8, of what significance is the
mention of the groaning sound that the
narrator says he too knew very well?
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FIN