Fiction 09/08
Narrative Point of View: Key Concepts
Point of view (POV) governs who tells the story and what they know, how they know it, and what the reader is invited to infer.
Key terms to know:
Omniscient narration: third-person voice that is all-knowing, often able to reveal the thoughts and feelings of multiple characters. Defined as literally all-knowing, like a godlike perspective. Example signals: direct access to multiple characters’ inner states.
Third-person omniscient vs. third-person limited omniscient: both use third-person pronouns (he, she, they), but omniscient has broad access to many minds; limited omniscient restricts access to the thoughts/feelings of a single character (often described as an over-the-shoulder view).
Third-person objective (fly on the wall): a godlike or external narrator that reports only external actions, dialogue, and observable behavior; no direct access to interior thoughts or feelings.
First-person narration: told by a character in the world of the story using I/we; can be reliable or unreliable, naive or sophisticated. The narrator’s perspective shapes what is known and how it’s interpreted.
Second-person narration: rare; addresses the reader as 'you.' It invites the reader to become part of the narrative world and poses a strong interpretive burden on the reader (extreme form of immersion).
How to recognize POV signals:
Pronouns: I, me, we (first person); you (second person); he, she, they (third person). Sometimes a first-person narrator may use third-person pronouns, but the narration remains centered on the speaker’s perspective.
Narrative voice: who is speaking, who is being described, and what the speaker reveals about their own knowledge or biases.
Reliability: first-person narrators can be unreliable (deliberate deceit, naivety, cognitive limits). Even seemingly honest narrators may be biased or mistaken.
Omissions and limits: what the narrator cannot know or what they choose not to disclose.
Why POV matters for interpretation:
POV determines what counts as evidence for characterization.
Different POVs impose different interpretive burdens on the reader (e.g., trusting an unreliable narrator vs. reading between the lines in an objective narration).
POV interacts with tone, bias, and social context to shape meaning and critique.
The speaker’s guidance on analysis:
Analyzing POV requires considering reliability, perspective, bias, and what is made visible or hidden by the narrative voice.
In some narratives, the POV itself is a character (first person), in others it’s a narrator external to the world (third person), and in rare cases it actively challenges readerly assumptions (second person).
The instructor emphasizes that POV shapes how readers approach character psychology and social values within a story.
Illustrative metaphor often used in class:
Narrative POV is like camera filters: different lenses (poV) reveal different details, emphasize different angles, and constrain what you can see or understand about the characters.
Wolf suspension of disbelief:
Coleridge’s concept: readers willingly suspend disbelief to enter the narrative world; second-person narration asks the reader to participate as a character in the world, which is an extreme form of this idea.
Types of reliability and “knowing” in first-person narrators:
A narrator may be trustworthy, biased, naive, or unreliable due to cognitive, moral, or social factors.
Examples often discussed in class include complex narrators in modernist or modern fiction (e.g., Sound and Fury, Barbecue) to illustrate reliability and perspective.
A Rose for Emily: Narrative Point of View and Social Setting
Opening line establishes a collective town voice:
Quote: "When Miss Emily Gerson died, our whole town went to her funeral." (the town speaks as a single group)
This raises the question: is the "we" the town’s collective voice or a spokesperson for the community?
The first paragraph reveals social attitudes:
Casual misogyny and a tone that signals the town’s normative judgments about Emily and her life.
The town’s curiosity about Emily’s home and private life, signaling social control by community standards.
Four elements of fiction laid out early in the text:
Characters: Emily Gerson (Miss Emily), Homer Barron, Emily’s father, the town residents.
Setting: A large, aging house in Jefferson, a fictional Southern town (Mississippi), near a Civil War cemetery; the setting signals both aristocratic lineage and the weight of the past.
Plot: Emily’s life, her father’s control over her marriage prospects, Homer Barron’s courtship, the town’s interference, Emily’s eventual killing of Homer and keeping his body.
Theme/Tone: The town’s collective memory, social mores, gender expectations, and obsession with the past.
Setting and historical context:
The town is described as deeply Southern, in the Deep South, in the interwar period (between World War I and II) with Jim Crow realities.
The presence of a Civil War cemetery emphasizes the South’s fixation on its past.
Industrialization and changing social mores (cars, modernization) contrast with the town’s insistence on tradition and aristocratic legitimacy.
The era is marked by segregation and entrenched Southern social hierarchies (Jim Crow), where race, class, and gender roles shape behavior and narrative voice.
Emily’s social position and family history:
Emily comes from an aristocratic Grierson family; the house is a symbol of that status.
After her father dies, Emily has no clear means of support; she relies on the town’s indirect charity (e.g., social amenities like watercolor classes, not paying taxes as a charitable peculiarity).
The town’s response to her unmarried status reflects social pressures to maintain traditional gender roles and status.
The town’s control over Emily’s life:
Homer Barron’s presence as a suitor is perceived as a threat to the social order; the town tries to steer or end the relationship.
Emily’s resistance to social pressures culminates in drastic acts; the story frames these acts as a dramatic response to a world in which she is constrained by expectations.
Homer Barron and the relationship dynamic:
Homer represents a non-conforming male figure (a suitor who does not fit the town’s traditional ideals); his presence exposes the fragility of Emily’s social standing.
The town’s manipulation of Emily’s life is set against the backdrop of racial and gender norms.
Emily’s act of violence and its symbolism:
Emily poisons Homer Barron (arsenic), which functions as a claim over control of her life and body.
She keeps Homer’s corpse in the upstairs bedroom, signaling a ritual of possession and a dying attachment to the past.
The final reveal (hair on the pillow) confirms that Emily slept next to the dead Homer, symbolizing an inability or refusal to let go of the past and of social conventions.
Symbolic structures and themes:
The house as a monument to the old South, decaying yet preserved; the town’s gaze fixes on Emily as a relic of a vanished aristocracy.
The cemetery at the town’s edge underscores the South’s obsession with death, memory, and the remnants of the Civil War era.
The town’s collective voice reveals its own complicity in Emily’s fate, exposing how social norms incentivize coercive behavior and moral blindness.
Emily as a character and social critique:
Emily embodies the tension between aristocratic lineage and economic decline; she clings to status even as she loses material means.
Her isolation reflects broader social dynamics: gendered restrictions, economic vulnerability, and resistance to social change.
The narrative voice and interpretation in Emily:
The town’s voice shapes readers’ sympathy and judgment; the narrator’s reliability is influenced by the town’s biases and selective presentation of Emily’s life.
The story uses a third-person collective narrator to critique communal attitudes—racism, sexism, and the idealization of the past.
Contextual connections and larger themes:
The South’s haunted sense of history and the myth of aristocracy intersect with the narrator’s portrayal of Emily’s life and choices.
The story invites readers to question whether Emily is a victim of social structure or an agent who defies it in drastic ways.
Visual and literary motifs connected to the narrative:
The old house, the dead Homer Barron, the cemetery, and Emily’s bed are potent symbols of memory, power, and the suspension of natural social order.
In-Text Details and Interpretive Notes from the Lecture
The facilitator identifies the opening as a deliberate use of a collective voice (the town) to frame Emily’s life within a social mosaic of values and judgments.
The second paragraph’s description anchors the setting: a big squared frame house with historic, Southern architectural features; the nearby cemetery marks the Civil War’s lasting legacy in the town’s psyche.
The discussion connects the setting to historical context:
Interwar period, late 1910s to 1930s, in the Deep South.
Jim Crow laws and racial segregation shape daily life and social expectations.
The town’s reverence for the past is linked to Gone with the Wind-era mythmaking, reinforcing a cherished but problematic nostalgia.
The third paragraph underscores the town’s values and biases:
Casual misogyny and casual racism index the town’s social norms and show how Emily is treated as a relic rather than a person with agency.
Colonel Sartorius’s title alludes to a romanticized Confederate past, illustrating the South’s ongoing obsession with its own history.
Emily’s social status and dependency dynamics:
Emily’s aristocratic lineage vs. her actual economic vulnerability after her father’s death underline a clash between idealized identity and material reality.
The town’s indirect charity (e.g., social events, the sense that she isn’t taxed) demonstrates social gatekeeping and paternalism toward a once-powerful family.
The instructor highlights Emily’s relationship with Homer Barron as a flashpoint for the town’s social control and Emily’s resistance to it.
The ending’s reveal (sleeping with the dead Homer) serves as a dramatic payoff to the themes of memory, control, and the impossibility of completely assimilating into modernity.
Pedagogical Reflections and Practice Prompts
Practice identifying POV signals in other texts:
What pronouns or narrative cues indicate the point of view?
Is the narrator reliable? Why or why not?
Does the narrator give access to multiple characters’ thoughts, or only one, or none?
Practice distinguishing the four main third-person modes:
Omniscient, limited omniscient (over the shoulder), objective (fly-on-the-wall), and the rare second-person approach.
Apply the camera-filter metaphor to Emily:
How does the town’s collective gaze filter Emily’s life and choices?
What might be revealed or concealed through this particular lens?
Quick Quiz Prompts (based on the class questions)
Question 1: What is omniscience in point of view? What do we mean by omniscience when we are discussing point of view?
Question 2: In Faulkner's A Rose for Emily, who is Emily Gerson?
Question 3: Who is Homer Barron?
Question 4: (Not listed in the transcript; see standard readings.)
Question 5: What does the town discover when they break into Emily's upstairs room?
Note: The instructor suggested that for the in-class quiz, students should answer with brief, concise responses (a word or short phrase is acceptable) and include their first and last name.
Contextual and Cross-Text References (mentioned in lecture)
Cisneros’s Barbecue: An example of first-person observation and reliability in a short story.
The Great Gatsby: A third-person narrator who sometimes presents a vision of events through the lens of a particular character (e.g., Nick Carraway).
The Sound and the Fury, and other works with unreliable narrators: illustrate how narrators’ limitations shape interpretation.
Italo Calvino, A Night Book of a Reader (example of second-person narrative in global literature): rare but used to discuss reader-n/text relationships and the reader’s role.
General scholarly concepts: Wolf suspension of disbelief, the ethical and epistemic responsibilities of narrators, and how social context (Jim Crow, the postwar American South) informs narrative choices.
Key takeaways for exam preparation
Be able to classify and define POV types and identify cues in a text (pronouns, narrator’s focus, reliability, access to thoughts/feelings).
Be able to explain how POV affects the interpretation of Emily’s life, motivations, and actions in A Rose for Emily.
Be able to articulate how setting (time, place, social norms) interacts with character and plot to create meaning.
Be able to discuss how the town’s collective voice shapes readers’ perception of Emily and the themes of memory, past vs. present, and social control.
Be prepared to explain symbolism (the house, the cemetery, the dead Homer Barron) and how they reinforce the central themes.
Be familiar with common questions about omniscient vs limited vs objective vs second-person narration, and how to argue about narrator reliability in close readings.