Point of View

From W100Wiki

The vantage point from which a narrative is told. A narrative is typically told from a first-person or third-person point of view; the second-person point of view is extremely rare. Novels sometimes, but in frequently, mix points of view.

In a narrative told from a first-person perspective, the author tells the story through a character who refers to himself or herself as "I". Such a narrator is usually (but not always) a major participant in the action. This first-person narrator recounts events as he or she experiences, remembers or hears about them. First-person narrators are sometimes unreliable narrators--and they may also be naive heroes--who color or distort matters in ways that the reader( at least eventually) detects. Occasionally, works written from the first-person point od view contain multiple narrators, each of whom personally recounts his or her story. In Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club(1989), several mothers and daughters convey varied perspectives on life in recounting their own histories.

Third-person narratives come in two types: omniscient and limited. As author taking an omniscient point of view assumes the vantage point of an all-knowing narrator able nor only to recount the action thoroughly and reliably but also to enter the mind of any character at any time in order to reveal his or her thoughts, feelings and beliefs directly to the reader. (Such a narrator, it should be pointed out, can conceal as well as reveal at will.) An author using the limited point of view recounts the story through the eyes of a single character(or occasionally more than one, but not all or the narrator would be an omniscient narrator). The reader is thus usually privy to the inner thoughts and feelings of only one character and receives the story as that character understands and experiences it, although not in that character's own voice. Such a narrator is generally an observer of or a participant in the action.

--from The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms