The Effect of Point of View in Literature
How does point of view determine a story’s effect? “A White Heron” by Sarah Orne Jewett is told in the third person narration style, but the point of view that the narrator adopts is Sylvia’s—the little girl who feels connected with nature and enjoys the beauty, peace and harmony that she experiences in the outdoors. Her perspective allows the author to depict the ornithologist as a kind of barbaric hunter who is out to destroy nature so that he can cruelly and coldly study it in his lab. To the girl, he is “the enemy” (Jewett)—the hunter who is out to catch the white heron and make of it a prize. He offers money to Sylvia and her grandmother if the girl will just confess where she saw the bird so that he can snatch it from the wild. Sylvia, too loyal to nature, and too fond of the animals and all the life of the outdoors refuses to divulge the secret—but the hunter being a hunter is sure to find it out. The story concludes with the narrator appealing to the reader to bring some joy to the girl, who is made sad in keeping her secret, denying her grandmother the promised money and losing the friendship of the ornithologist. The reader is made to sympathize with the girl because the narrator describes the action from her perspective so vividly. However, had the narrator told the story from the young man’s perspective or from the grandmother’s perspective, it would have been a very different story indeed: the reader might have been compelled to feel sympathy for the grandmother or feel the disappointment of the young man who sought his prized bird.
Point of view is important when telling a story, as Judith Oster points out in her essay on perspective in the classroom. In other words, how people look at things, the orientation from which they are situated, will determine what they see, how they think about what they are seeing, and the information that they are able to process about the object of sight. In literature, point of view serves as a kind of frame that brings the characters and plot into focus: it grants a single perspective (usually—unless it is a story that uses multiple points of view, like Rashomon, to convey a more complete picture of events). A writer will use point of view to help manipulate the reader’s experience and draw attention to details that might not be obvious or noticed were the perspective or point of view different. For instance, in “A White Heron,” the action is told mainly from Sylvia’s perspective. As a child, her point of view is primarily focused on goodness, the beauty and wonder of nature, and a fondness for the birds, whom she considers her friends. At the end of the story, when she is asked to choose between the happiness...
Works Cited
Hirvela, Alan, and Diane Belcher. "Coming back to voice: The multiple voices and identities of mature multilingual writers." Journal of Second Language Writing 10.1-2 (2001): 83-106.
Jewett, Sarah Orne. “A White Heron” http://www.public.coe.edu/~theller/soj/awh/heron.htm#gifts
Oster, Judith. "Seeing with different eyes: Another view of literature in the ESL class." TESOL Quarterly 23.1 (1989): 85-103.
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