Point of View

Point of view, as defined by C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon in A Handbook to Literature, 6th edition (1992), is "the vantage point from which an author presents a story." The vantage point takes into account several aspects, including the narrator's physical perspective (what she or he sees, as a camera would take it in), the narrator's emotional perspective (mood) and the narrator's related social or relational perspective (attitude toward what is seen). Thus a narrator will record physical observations of items seen, such as a hat, and the vantage point from which it is seen, on another character's head. The narrator would also speak of this item in a certain mood, which could be happy, as expressed in ornate or playful description, or miserable, as expressed in a flat tone and sparsely worded description. Finally, the narrator's reaction to the item as, for example, threatening...