JentooEnglish Literature

AP® English Literature and Composition · Narration (NAR) — Skill Category 4, Prose Fiction

4.B Perspective Versus Point of View (NAR-1.B)

Point of view is the narrator's physical and grammatical position in the story; perspective is the attitude, mood, or bias they bring to what they see from there. The same vantage point can produce completely different stories.

Watch it drawn3 questionsPractice

Point of view is a technical fact about a story: who is speaking, and from where. First person, third person limited, third person omniscient, the window a narrator stands at, the room he is allowed into. It answers the question 'who has access to this scene.' Perspective is a different question entirely: given that access, what does the narrator notice, care about, and feel? Two narrators can share the exact same point of view, the same first-person voice at the same window, and still produce stories that feel like they belong to different worlds, because one is grieving and one is in love, one is suspicious and one is trusting.

This is why point of view never equals opinion. A narrator can state an opinion outright, 'the strike was a mistake,' and still report the weeks that follow with scrupulous fairness, giving both sides their own words and owning his bad predictions. His stance in the room is constant. His judgment is a separate, removable layer sitting on top of that stance. Confusing the two makes students read narration as a verdict when it is really a camera position, and the tint on the lens is a separate decision the writer makes.

This distinction sets up everything else in how narration is studied: tone comes from perspective, narrative distance comes from how close point of view lets the narrator get, and the gap that opens in an unreliable narrator is exactly the gap between where someone stands and how honestly or skewedly they report what they see from there.

Key terms

Point of view
The position and grammatical mode from which a story is told, such as first person or third person limited.
Perspective
The attitude, mood, or disposition a narrator brings to what they see from their point of view.
Narrative distance
How close or far a narrator's telling keeps the reader from a character's inner life or events.
Unreliable narrator
A narrator whose report of events diverges from the truth of the story, opening a gap between stance and honesty.

Watch it explained

  1. How it worksHow does where a narrator stands differ from how that narrator sees what they are standing over?
  2. Worked exampleShow me the same street scene told from the same spot by a grieving man and a man in love.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't point of view just another name for the narrator's opinion?

Check yourself

Your turneasy1 of 3
Version 1: 'The fair had been in the square 7 days. The lamps were strung the whole length of it and the noise came up to the window like something rising.' Version 2: 'The fair had been in the square 7 days. The lamps would come down on Sunday and the square would be as it was, and the noise came up to the window and went on for 7 hours.' Both are told in the first person by a man at the same window. What differs?

End of topic.

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