Narrator and Point of View: Study Guide (English Literature 1.4)

Who is telling this, and from where?

A narrator is the voice that relates the events of a narrative to the reader. The narrator also sets up a relationship between the text and the reader: we may trust the voice, doubt it, or enjoy the gap between what it says and what it shows. In poetry the equivalent figure is the speaker, and you will meet that in Unit 2.

One rule governs all narrator analysis: a narrator or speaker is not necessarily the author. The writer creates the voice. When you write about it, say “the narrator suggests” or “the speaker believes”, not “the author thinks”.

Two terms are easy to confuse.

• Perspective is how narrators, characters or speakers see their circumstances: what they notice, assume and value.
• Point of view is the position from which the narrator relates events: inside the action as a participant (first person) or outside it as an observer (third person).

A narrator has both. The point of view sets what the narrator can access; the perspective colours what they make of it.

First person and third person

Point of view	Relationship to events	What it can provide	What it cannot provide
First person (“I”)	Involved: a character in the story	Intimate access to one mind; a personal voice; the narrator’s own bias made visible	Direct access to other minds; events the narrator did not witness; a guarantee of accuracy
Third person observational	Outside; reports what can be seen or heard	A detached, camera-like account	Thoughts and feelings (unless they are shown by speech or action)
Third person limited	Outside, but tied closely to one character	That character’s thoughts and perceptions	Other characters’ inner lives; facts that character does not know (unless the narrator steps outside)
Third person omniscient	Outside, with knowledge of several minds and events	Broad knowledge, comment, irony, a wide view	The sense of being limited to one person’s experience

The range within third person runs from observational to all-knowing. A third-person narrator is usually not affected by the events, which gives them a degree of distance. First-person narrators are involved, so their relationship to the events and to other characters shapes what they tell.

Perspective controls emphasis

Because a narrator sees from somewhere, the narrator also selects. Notice:

• What is described closely and what is passed over quickly.
• Words that carry judgement (a narrator who calls a tract of country “dreary” is also telling you how they feel).
• Gaps between what the narrator says and what the details show.

This is why a narrator’s perspective is said to control the details and emphases that affect how readers experience and interpret a text.

Worked example 1: a third-person voice with an attitude (public-domain text)

Jane Austen begins Pride and Prejudice (1813): “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” A few lines later the narrator says that, whatever such a man’s own feelings may be, the neighbouring families so fix this truth in their minds that he is considered “the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.”

Step 1: Identify the narrator and point of view. There is no “I” character. The voice stands outside the events and speaks with authority about what people think. That is a third-person narrator, and a broad, knowing one.

Step 2: What does the narrator know? The narrator knows about the feelings of “surrounding families” and about the single man’s views “on his first entering a neighbourhood”. That is wide knowledge: the voice reports a community’s opinion.

Step 3: What is the narrator’s perspective? The first sentence states a “truth” that the second shows to be a belief held by families with an interest. The phrase “rightful property” treats a person as something to be owned. The narrator therefore stands slightly apart from the view being described and presents it with irony.

Step 4: What is the function of this point of view? It lets the narrator comment on a community’s assumptions before any character has spoken. The reader is placed in a relationship of shared amusement with the narrator and is invited to question what the community takes for granted.

Model sentence: “By reporting the neighbourhood’s view in confident, broad terms (‘a truth universally acknowledged’) and then showing it to be a matter of what families want (‘rightful property’), the third-person narrator establishes an ironic distance that invites the reader to question the assumption.”

Notice that the model does not say “Austen thinks”. It names the narrator’s technique.

Worked example 2: a first-person narrator who sees less than the reader (original passage, written by Marlbridge)

I was eleven the summer Uncle Teodor stopped speaking to my mother, and I thought it had something to do with the pears. They had argued over the pear tree on the boundary, whose branches hung into our garden, and every evening that August my mother carried the fallen fruit across the road in a bowl, and every evening Uncle Teodor’s door stayed shut. I decided he did not like pears. It did not occur to me to wonder why my mother kept carrying them.

Step 1: Identify the narrator and point of view. “I” and “my mother” mark a first-person narrator who is a character: a child in the past, telling the story. The phrase “I was eleven the summer” suggests an older voice looking back, but the passage gives few signs of the older voice’s judgement, so the voice stays close to the child’s view.

Step 2: What can this narrator provide? What she saw: the argument, the bowl, the shut door. She can also report her own conclusions (“I decided he did not like pears”).

Step 3: What can she not provide? The reason for the argument (she says only that it was “over the pear tree”), what Uncle Teodor feels behind the door, and why her mother keeps going. The narrator does not know, or does not yet understand.

Step 4: What does the reader infer? A reader reads the same details differently. A mother who carries fruit across the road every evening and does not give up is offering something: an apology, a peace offering, or a refusal to let a quarrel stand. The child’s explanation (“he did not like pears”) is plainly inadequate. The gap between what the narrator concludes and what the details suggest is the point of the passage.

Step 5: State the function. The first-person, child’s-eye perspective controls what we get. Because the narrator sees only the surface of the quarrel, the reader must infer the emotion beneath it, and the repeated image of the bowl becomes a quiet sign of the mother’s persistence.

Model paragraph opening: “The first-person narrator, whose perspective is that of a child, reports the visible details of the quarrel (the bowl, the shut door) but misreads them (‘he did not like pears’), so the reader is invited to see more than she does: that her mother is repeatedly offering reconciliation.”

Strong and weak statements about narrators

Weak	Why it is weak	Stronger
“The narrator is the author.”	Confuses created voice with writer	“The narrator is a child recalling the summer; her limited understanding shapes the account.”
“It is first person so it is personal.”	Names the point of view with no effect	“Because the narrator is first person and a child, the reader receives only what she saw and must infer her mother’s motive.”
“The narrator is biased.”	A label with no evidence	“The narrator’s explanation (‘he did not like pears’) shows a perspective that cannot yet read adult conflict.”

Checking your inference

1. Have you named the point of view correctly? Look for “I” and for how close the narration stays to one mind.
2. Have you said what the narrator can and cannot know? That is often the most useful sentence.
3. Have you separated narrator from author? Use “the narrator” in your claim.
4. Have you said what the reader does with the gap? Often the effect is that the reader sees more, or must weigh the narrator’s account.

Common misconceptions

• “First person means the narrator is the main character.” Not always. A first-person narrator may be a minor witness to someone else’s story.
• “Third person is objective.” A third-person narrator may be observational or all-knowing and may still carry attitudes, as the irony in Austen’s opening shows.
• “If the narrator says it, it is true.” A narrator may be mistaken, partial or self-serving. Test their account against the details.
• “Perspective and point of view mean the same.” Point of view is the position of telling; perspective is how the narrator sees and judges.
• “The narrator’s words show the author’s opinion.” A narrator’s attitude belongs to the voice and is not automatically the writer’s own.
• “A limited narrator is a weaker narrator.” Limits can be a source of effect, because what the narrator misses is what the reader sees.

Where this leads

Try the practice questions, then the checklist and revision notes. The next topic, Writing a paragraph with a claim and textual evidence, shows how to turn analysis like this into a paragraph. In Unit 2 the narrator’s counterpart, the speaker in a poem, appears in The speaker as a character. For character evidence, see Topic 1.1.