Perspective

Hello and welcome back, readers. This term we have been covering the use of first and third person perspectives in our LA lessons. I recently got to practise my skills in the third person in the termly writing assessment. What did I learn? I'll answer that soon enough.

First Person:

The first person perspective is a context where the story is told through the narrator's eyes, using words like "I" and "Myself" to refer to the narrator. In this form of writing, there is a narrowed perspective, limiting it to the viewpoint of the author. There is greater allowance for emotion and personal voice. Also, all the actions are perceived through the persona described in the text. For example, if one is writing about a young child, then the language would be more simple, longer words would be broken up, like in-ter-rup-tion as the child would not know how to spell it. Sentence structure would be simpler and there would be simpler vocabulary because of the child's young age, in order to bring out the authenticity of the story.

There are several uses for the first person perspective. It is usually used to describe emotions, perspectives and thoughts in greater detail, like in the short story "Flowers for Algernon". However, it can also be used to create distance between the persona and unimportant characters in a story. For example in "The Case for the Defence", the narrator is an experienced criminal lawyer. This serves to focus more on the case than the characters involved, like the judge, the jury, and the spectators. The first person can also be used to filter everything through the narrator's perspective in order to bring out a predominant theme or idea. For example, in "Red Letter Day", the story is told through the perspective of an old man in order to bring out the theme of love better. Finally, the first person perspective allows the reader to better relate to the character in the story.

Third Person:

The third person perspective is where there is an omniscient narrator, and the story revolves around characters like "Jack" and "Jill" rather than "I" or "myself". In other words, the story is not told through a persona, but rather as an observation of different personas. There is greater allowance for setting descriptions, and tension during the rising action when there is foreshadowing the protagonist does not notice. For example, there could be a section devoted to setting description rather than character development. Usually this brings out a certain theme or idea, like tranquility or sacrifice.

There are also different uses for the third person perspective. The most common is to maintain a balanced view and opinion so that there is no dominant distortion of objectivity, followed by heavy focus on setting description. However, the third person perspective can be used to describe two different places one after the other. For example, a paragraph can be inserted at certain points to elaborate on another place, which a normal first person perspective cannot achieve, because the narrator would not know about the other place. E.g. "I stood near the mountain...... Far away, Mark was bathing." This would mean the narrator is omniscient, which is not possible. Then, the third person perspective can be used to describe two different people's emotions. For example in a romance short story, there could be hesitation on both parties' parts, and the author can use third person to describe how they were both hesitating to confess.

Summary:

The first person is more character driven, while the third person is more setting driven. However, there are several notable exceptions to the above generalisation, like "The Case for the Defence". They each have their own merits, and now I think I know when to use them. Third person is the basic requirement, to describe setting, and to manipulate the first person to its full extent one must be a writer of high skill level.