Text Analysis and History

1
Text Analysis and History

• Session Three Point of View

2
Agenda

• Repair Work story, plot, character, and
  characterization
• Plot in Wintersons The 24-Hour Dog
• Point of view
• Group work Point of view in The Dead

3
Repair Work

• Story and plot
• Character and characterization
• Plot in Wintersons The 24-Hour Dog

4
An introduction to point of view

• What do we study when we study point of view?
• Whose version of events are we presented with?
• Why has the author decided to present us with
  that particular version?
• How does he persuade us and about what by
  designing the point of view in a particular
  manner?
• The creation of sympathy, antipathy

5
An introduction to point of view

• Some competing terms
• Point of view
• Perspective
• Voice
• Tone
• Persona

6
An introduction to point of view

• First person points of view

• Third person points of view

7
First person points of view

• Witness or minor participant e.g., Dr Watson
• Central character e.g., Robinson Crusoe, Bridget
  Joness Diary, The 24-Hour Dog
• The self-conscious narrator
• The unreliable narrator

8
An Example Lawrence Sterne, The Life and
Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (

•   Digressions, incontestably, are the sun- shine
  ---- they are the life, the soul of reading
  -- take them out of this book for instance, --
  you might as well take the book along with them
  -- one cold eternal winter would reign in every
  page of it restore them to the writer ----
  he steps forth like a bridegroom, -- bids All
  hail brings in variety, and forbids the appe-
  tite to fail.

9
An Example

• Sunday 19 March
• 8st 12, alchohol units 3, cigarettes 10, calories
  2465 (but mainly chocolate).
• Hurray. Whole new positive perspective on
  birthday. Have been talking to Jude about book
  she has been reading about festivals and rites of
  passage in primitive cultures and am feeling
  happy and serene. (Helen Fielding, Bridget
  Joness Diary, p. 81)

10
The third person omniscient point of view

• The intrusive point of view
• telling
• The narrator comments and evaluates on events in
  his own voice

• The unintrusive point of view
• showing
• The narrator describes and reports objectively

11
The third person limited point of view

• The narrator limits himself to what is thought,
  felt, perceived, and remembered by a single
  character

12
An example

• Mr Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts,
  sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the
  experience of three and twenty years had been
  insufficient to make his wife understand his
  character. Her mind was less difficult to
  develope. She was a woman of mean understanding,
  little information, and uncertain temper. When
  she was disconcerted she fancied herself nervous.
  The business of her life was to get her daughters
  married its solace was visiting and news. (Jane
  Austen, Pride and Prejudice, p. 53)

13
An Example

• He did not complain. It was the way of life, and
  it was just. He had been born close to the earth,
  close to the earth had he lived, and the law
  thereof was not new to him. It was the law of all
  flesh. Nature was not kindly to the flesh. She
  had no concern for that conctrete thing called
  the individual. Her interest lay in the species,
  the race. This was the deepest abstraction old
  Koskooshs babaric mind was capable of, but he
  grasped it firmly. He saw it exemplified in all
  life. (Jack London, The Law of Life, p. 973-74)

14
An example

• Mrs Tulliver was what is called a good-tempered
  person never cried when she was a baby, on any
  slighter ground than hunger and pins and from
  the cradle upwards had been healthy, fair, plump,
  and dull witted in short the flower of her
  family for beauty and amiability. But milk and
  mildness are not the best things for keeping, and
  when they turn only a little sour, they may
  disagree with young stomachs seriously. (George
  Eliot, The Mill on the Floss)
• 19th century, Victorianism, realism

15
An Example

• Charlie Stove waited until he heard his mother
  snore before he got out of bed. Even then he
  moved with caution and tiptoed to the window. The
  front of the house was irregular, so that it was
  possible to see a light burning in his mothers
  room. But now all the windows were dark. A
  search-light passed across the sky, lighting the
  banks of cloud and probing the dark deep spaces
  between, seeking enemy airships. The wind blew
  from the sea, and Charlie Stowe could hear behind
  his mothers snores the beating of the waves. A
  draught through the crack in the window-frame
  stirred his night-shirt. Charlie Stowe was
  frightened. (Graham Greene, I Spy, p. 534)

16
An Example

• When the door had closed Charlie Stowe tiptoed
  upstairs and got into bed. He wondered why his
  father had left the house again so late at night
  and who the strangers were. Surprise and awe kept
  him for a little while awake. It was as if a
  familiar photograph had stepped from the frame to
  reproach him with neglect. He remembered how his
  father had held tight to his collar and fortified
  himself with proverbs, and he thought for the
  first time that, while his mother was boisterous
  and kindly, his father was very lilke himself,
  doing things in the dark which frightened him.
  (Graham Green, I Spy, p. 537)

17
James Joyce, The Dead

• Outline the points of view used in the short
  story.
• Discuss the points of view and their thematic
  function