CHAPTER VII
THE POINT OF VIEW IN NARRATIVE
The Importance of the Point of View––Two Classes, The Internal and the External––I. Subdivisions of the First Class: 1. The Point of View of the Leading Actor; 2. The Point of View of Some Subsidiary Actor; 3. The Points of View of Different Actors; 4. The Epistolary Point of View.––II. Subdivisions of the Second Class:––1. The Omniscient Point of View; 2. The Limited Point of View; 3. The Rigidly Restricted Point of View––Two Tones of Narrative, Impersonal and Personal: 1. The Impersonal Tone; 2. The Personal Tone––The Point of View as a Factor in Construction––The Point of View as the Hero of the Narrative.
The Importance of the Point of View.––We have now examined in detail the elements of narrative, and must next consider the various points of view from which they may be seen and, in consequence, be represented. Granted a given series of events to be set forth, the structure of the plot, the means of character delineation, the use of setting, the entire tone and tenor of the narrative, are all dependent directly on the answer to the question, Who shall tell the story?
For a given train of incidents is differently seen and judged, according to the standpoint from which it is observed. The evidence in most important murder trials consists mainly of successive narratives told by different witnesses; and it is very interesting to notice, in comparing them, how very different a tone and tenor is given to the same event by each of the observers who recounts it. It remains for the jury to determine, if possible, from a comparison of the various views of the various witnesses, what it was that actually happened. But this, in many 121 cases, is extremely difficult. One witness saw the action in one way, another in another; one formed a certain judgment of the character of the accused, another formed a judgment diametrically different; each has his separate sense of the train of causation that culminated in the act; the accused himself would disagree with all the witnesses, if indeed he were capable of looking on the facts without conscious or unconscious self-deception; and we may be certain that an infallible omniscient mind, cognizant of all the hidden motives, would see the matter differently still. The task of the jury is, in the main, to induce from all these tragic inconsistencies an absolute outlook upon the real truth that underlies the facts so differently seen and so variously judged.
Such an absolute outlook is hardly possible to the finite mind of man; and though it is often assumed by the writer of fiction in the telling of his tale, it can seldom be consistently maintained. It is therefore safer to acknowledge that the absolute truth of a story, whether actual or fictitious, can never be entirely told; that the same train of incidents looks different from different points of view; and that therefore the various points of view from which any story may be looked upon should be studied carefully for the purpose of determining from which of them it is possible, in a given case, to approach most nearly a clear vision of the truth.
Two Classes, The Internal and the External.––The points of view from which a story may be seen and told are many and various; but they may all be grouped into two classes, the internal and the external. A story seen internally is narrated in the first person by one of its participants; a story seen externally is narrated in the third person by a mind aloof from the events depicted. There are, of course, many variations, both of the internal and of the external point of view. These in turn must be 122 examined, for the purpose of determining the special advantages and disadvantages of each.
I. Subdivisions of the First Class: 1. The Point of View of the Leading Actor.––First of all, a story may be told by the leading actor in its series of events,––the hero, as in “Henry Esmond,” or the heroine, as in “Jane Eyre.” This point of view is of especial value in narratives in which the element of action is predominant. The multifarious adventures of Gil Blas sound at once more vivid and more plausible narrated in the first person than they would sound narrated in the third. When what is done is either strange or striking, we prefer to be told about it by the very man who did it. “Treasure Island” is narrated by Jim Hawkins, “Kidnapped” by David Balfour; and much of the vividness of these exciting tales depends upon the fact that they are told in each case by a boy who stood ever in the forefront of the action. The plausibility of “Robinson Crusoe” is increased by the convention that the hero is narrating his own personal experience: in fact Defoe, in all his fictions, preferred to write in the first person, because what he sought primarily was plausibility of tone.