The Point of View should be stated. The point of view, whether fixed or moving, should be made clear. Either it should be definitely stated, or it should be suggested by some phrase in the description. In the many examples which are quoted in this chapter, it would be well to see what it is that gives the point of view. The picture gains in distinctness when the point of view is known. The following sentences are from “The Old Manse;” there is no mistake here. The reader knows every move the author makes. It opens with:—
“Between two tall gateposts of rough-hewn stone (the gate itself having fallen from its hinges at some unknown epoch) we beheld the gray front of the old parsonage terminating the vista of an avenue of black ash-trees.”
From the street the reader is taken to “the rear of the house,” where there was “the most delightful little [59] nook of a study that ever offered its snug seclusion to a scholar.” Through its window the clergyman saw the opening of the “deadly struggle between two nations.” He heard the rattle of musketry, and
“there needed but a gentle wind to sweep the battle smoke around this quiet house. Perhaps the reader, whom I cannot help considering as my guest in the Old Manse and entitled to all courtesy in the way of sight-showing,—perhaps he will choose to take a nearer view of the memorable spot. We stand now on the river’s brink.”... “Here we are, at the point where the river was crossed by the old bridge.”... “The Old Manse! We had almost forgotten it, but will return thither through the orchard.”... “What with the river, the battle-field, the orchard, and the garden, the reader begins to despair of finding his way back into the Old Manse. But in agreeable weather it is the truest hospitality to keep him out-of-doors. I never grew quite acquainted with my habitation till a long spell of sulky rain had confined me beneath its roof. There could not be a more sombre aspect of external nature than as then seen from the windows of my study.”
And so Hawthorne continues through this long and beautiful description of “The Old Manse;” every change in the point of view is noted.
Mental Point of View. Closely connected with the physical point of view is the mood or purpose of the writer; this might be called the mental point of view. Not everything should be told which the author could know from his position, but only those things which at the time serve his purpose. In the description already quoted from Newman, the mercantile gentleman notes a large number of features which are the commercial advantages of Attica; of these but three are worthy of mention by “yon pilgrim student” in giving his impression of Athens as “a shrine where he might [60] take his fill of gazing on those emblems and coruscations of invisible unoriginate perfection.” The others—the soil, the streams, the climate, the limestone, the fisheries, and the silver mines—do not serve his purpose. Hawthorne in the long description already mentioned has retained those features which suggest quiet and peace. Such a profusion of “quiet,” “half asleep,” “peaceful,” “unruffled,” “unexcitable” words and phrases never “loitered” through forty pages of “dreamy” and “whispering” description.
In the following bit from “Lear,” where Edgar tells his blinded father how high the cliff is, only those details are included which measure distance.
“How fearful
And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles; half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire,—dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,
Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge,
That on th’ unnumbered idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high.—I’ll look no more,
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.”
The following is from Kipling’s “The Light that Failed:”—
“What do you think of a big, red, dead city built of red sandstone, with green aloes growing between the stones, lying out neglected on honey-colored sands? There are forty dead kings there, Maisie, each in a gorgeous tomb finer than all the others. You look at the palaces and streets and shops and tanks, and think that men must live there, till you find [61] a wee gray squirrel rubbing its nose all alone in the marketplace, and a jeweled peacock struts out of a carved doorway and spreads its tail against a marble screen as fine pierced as point-lace. Then a monkey—a little black monkey—walks through the main square to get a drink from a tank forty feet deep. He slides down the creepers to the water’s edge, and a friend holds him by the tail, in case he should fall in.
“Is all that true?
“I have been there and seen. Then evening comes and the lights change till it’s just as though you stood in the heart of a king-opal. A little before sundown, as punctually as clockwork, a big bristly wild boar, with all his family following, trots through the city gate, churning the foam on his tusks. You climb on the shoulder of a big black stone god, and watch that pig choose himself a palace for the night and stump in wagging his tail. Then the night-wind gets up, and the sands move, and you hear the desert outside the city singing, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,’ and everything is dark till the moon rises.”