Short Story Boot Camp Tone and PointofView Point

Short Story Boot Camp Tone and Point-of-View

Point of View: The Position or Stance of the Work’s Narrator or Speaker

Point of View • The speaker, narrator, persona, or voice created by authors to tell stories, present arguments, and express attitudes and judgments. • Involves not only the speaker’s physical position as an observer and recorder, but also the ways in which the speaker’s social, political, and mental circumstances affect the narrative.

Point of View • One of the most complex and subtle aspects of literary study • May be considered as the centralizing or guiding intelligence in a work • Determines how we read, understand, and respond to the work

Point of View • Conditions that affect Point of View – The physical situation of the narrator or speaker, as an observer – The speaker’s intellectual and emotional position

Determining Point of View • First, determine the work’s grammatical voice (1 st, 2 nd, or 3 rd person) • Then study the ways in which the subject, characterization, dialogue, and form interact with the point of view.

1 st Person Point of View • The narrator tells about events he or she has personally witnessed – May be named or unnamed – Tells about events in a number of ways: • What he has done, said, heard, and thought (firsthand) • What he has observed others doing and saying (firsthand witness) • What others have said to him or communicated to him (secondhand testimony and hearsay) • What he is able to inferor deduce from information he has discovered (inferential information) • What he is able to conjecture about how a character or characters might think and act, given his knowledge of a situation (conjectural, imaginative, or intuitive information)

First Person Speakers • The most independent of the author • Since most 1 st person narrators are describing their own experiences, they are accepted as reliable • If they have interests or limitations that lead them to mislead, distort, or even lie, they can be unreliable (an adult talking about his childhood, etc. )

Second Person • The narrator is speaking to someone else who is addressed as “You. ” • Least common of the points of view • Two major possibilities: – Tells a listener what he or she has done and said at a past time (like a parent telling a child what he/she has done) – Sometimes the narrator seems to be addressing a “you, ” but they are actually referring mainly to themselves.

Third Person • The speaker emphasizes the actions and speeches of others • Three variants of 3 rd person POV: – Dramatic or objective – Omniscient – Limited omniscient

3 rd Person Objective • The most direct method of narration • Narrator is unidentified speaker who reports things like a camera • “fly on the wall” • Limited only to what is said and what happens • Allows readers to draw their own conclusions

3 rd Person Omniscient • Can see all and potentially can disclose all • Knows what is going on in the minds of the characters • Narrator may “know” some characters better than others

3 rd Person Limited • Focuses on the thoughts and deeds of a single, major character—Point-of-View Character • Most everything in the story is there because the point-of-view character sees it, hears it, responds to it, thinks about it, imagines it entirely (stream-ofconsciousness), does it or shares in it, tries to control it, or is controlled by it.

Verb Tense • When writing about point of view pay attention to the tense used by the narrators • Most narrators rely on the past tense: The actions happened in the past, and now they are over. • Dialogue brings the story into the present • Sometimes an author uses present tense to help the reader experience the story as it unfolds

Tone The Expression of Attitude in Fiction

Tone • The methods by which writers and speakers reveal attitudes or feelings. • Tone does not refer so much to attitudes themselves, but to those techniques and modes of presentation that reveal or create attitudes.

What to Look For: Tone • Determine the Writer’s Attitude Toward the Material – Irony is always an indication of Tone – Whose side does the author take? – What is the main idea of the text?

What to Look For: Tone • Discover the Writer’s Attitude Toward Readers – Authors recognize that readers participate in the creative act and that all elements of a story—word choice, characterization, allusions, levels of reality —must take readers’ responses into account – Does the author ‘compliment’ the readers on their knowledge and satisfy their curiosity and desire to be interested, stimulated, and pleased?

What to Look For: Tone • Determine Other Dominant Attitudes – Look at the interactions between characters – Watch how characters respond to their circumstances – Watch for the consequences of those responses.

Tone & Humor • There must be something to laugh at • Laughter stems out of disproportion or incongruity • Safety and/or good will prevents harm and ensures humor • Unfamiliarity, newness, and uniqueness produce the spontaneity that prompts laughter

Tone and Irony • In expressing an idea ironically, writers pay the greatest compliment to their audience, for they assume that readers have sufficient intelligence and skill to discover the real meaning of quizzical or ambiguous statements and situations

Verbal Irony • One thing is said, but another (usually the opposite) is meant – Understatement (Litotes) – Overstatement (Hyperbole) – Double entendre

Situational Irony • The chasm between what we hope for or expect and what really happens – Often pessimistic – Emphasizes that humans have little control over their lives

Dramatic Irony • Results from misunderstanding and lack of knowledge • A type of situational irony • The character lacks information or misconstrues the information, but the reader and sometimes other characters see everything completely and correctly

Cosmic Irony • Stems from the power of chance and fate • A type of situational irony that emphasizes the pessimistic and fatalistic side of life • The universe is indifferent to humans and even their best efforts are not good enough because the universe will eventually beat them down