Point of View

Jonathan Franzen writes The Corrections in the third-person point of view. This approach allows him to function as the narrator and to provide the necessary background and detail information that is of importance to the reader. It allows him to present the perspective of each of the major characters towards Alfred's illness and the idea of spending Christmas in St. Jude. The use of the third-person point of view overcomes the limitations of the first person point of view in which the knowledge of the reader is limited to the knowledge of the storyteller. This approach would not have worked for this kind of novel. For example, the reader would not have known about Chip's problems in Lithuania until he arrived in St. Jude. The third-person point of view is most appropriate for a novel of this type. It allows the reader to learn of the...