Narrative perspectives
or points of view
First person:
an I or we serves as the narrator.
The narrator may be a minor character, observing the action, (eg. Nick in The Great Gatsby), or the main protagonist (eg. Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye). A first-person narrator may be reliable or unreliable.
While first person point of view can allow a reader to feel very close to a specific character’s point of view, it also limits the reader to that one perspective: the reader can only know what this character knows.
Third person – limited:
the narrator knows only the thoughts and feelings of one character, while other characters are presented only externally.
Third person – omniscient:
the narrator knows the thoughts and feelings of all the characters in the story.
Free indirect speech:
narrating a character’s thoughts or speech combining some features of third-person report with some features of first-person direct speech, allowing an overlapping of internal and external perspectives.
Free indirect speech
a way of narrating characters’ thoughts or speech that combines some of the features of third-person report with some features of first-person direct speech, allowing an overlapping of internal and external perspectives.
- there are no tag-phrases (‘she thought’, etc.)
- the language of the character’s own thoughts is used
‘She’d leave here tomorrow’
note the indicators of time and place
(It is not ‘She decided to leave that place the next day’)
Free indirect speech
features:
· tense
· use of third person, not first person pronouns
However,
· no reporting clause followed by ‘that’ (‘he said that…’)
· no indirect questions (‘she wondered what the outcome would be’)
An example of free indirect speech is:
‘His address was good, and Catherine felt herself in high luck. When they were seated at tea she found him as agreeable as she had already given him credit for being.’
This speech shows Catherine’s thoughts even though she is not the narrator.
· free indirect speech conveys a sense of immediacy.
· a character’s thoughts or feelings are expressed in the narration
Direct speech
· the reader reads a character’s actual words indicated by speech marks:
“I consider that most impertinent, sir,” remarked Catherine.
Indirect speech (or reported speech)
· the narrator sums up what a character says, without speech marks:
Two gentlemen pronounced her to be a very pretty girl.