Entry #11: Why Writers Should Consider Point of View

One element of narrative writing that I wish to revisit and reflect upon is point of view. Before reading this chapter and before the Narrative Genre Expert Group presented, I had only thought of point of view as first-person (I), second-person (you), and third person (he/she/they).  I had heard of an omniscient narrator, but I couldn't exactly explain what an omniscient narrator was. 

After reviewing the descriptions in Tompkins' (2012) and the narrative genre presentation, I now understand that the omniscient viewpoint is when the author is able to see and know everything about each character (p. 187). The limited omniscient viewpoint uses third person point of view to hear the thoughts of one character without knowing everything. Then, objective viewpoint is similar to a movie in that readers only learn from "what can be seen or heard" and do not dive as deeply into characters' thoughts and feelings (p. 187).

Brown Girl Dreaming
(Woodson, 2014)

Reviewing these different points of view led me to wonder: Is there one point of view that is more powerful than another? Perhaps this depends on the purpose and audience for the particular piece. When thinking of the article I gathered for my group's biography presentation, Marshall (2019) emphasized the need for autobiographies when teaching biographical counter-narratives as first-person point of view is more powerful when writing for this purpose.  For example, she mentioned Jacqueline Woodson's (2014) Brown Girl Dreaming which is a memoir in verse of Woodson's childhood. I read this text for one of my biography mentor texts, and personally I believe this text would not have been nearly as powerful if it was written from a point of view other than first-person.

Story told from the
Wolf's Point of View

I appreciate that Tompkins (2012) mentions a mini-lesson/guided practice activity in which students can experiment with how "an author's viewpoint can slant a story" (p. 192). Tompkins (2012) suggest that students could tell the same story (e.g. Little Red Riding Hood) from the perspective of each character in the story. With this experiment, students learn what is important to include for some characters but not others. Although this is a fairly popular example, this changing of viewpoints could be modeled with the original version of The Three Little Pigs versus The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs (Scieszka, 1989). 

When thinking of multiple perspectives/points of view, I can't help but think of Muhammad's (2020) work too. In both her intellectual and criticality pursuits, Muhammad (2020) encourages educators to provide opportunities to view issues from multiple perspectives. She writes, "Examining text and concepts through different perspectives and standpoints is an intellectual task" (p. 121). Not only does examining multiple points of view foster the ability to see multiple sides of a situation, but it also lends itself to rigorous and meaningful learning experiences. Perhaps another example of a text set to consider is multiple perspectives on the story of Christopher Columbus. Then, students can develop their intellect and criticality as they examine and analyze this story from multiple points of view.

As a future teacher of literacy, I will take this developing knowledge of point of view with me and consider this when teaching the narrative genre as well as the other genres that intertwine with narrative writing. Although my question of which point of view is the most powerful is still unanswered, I will continue to explore this question as I read narrative texts in the future.

References

Marshall, E. (2019). Life writing and the language arts. Language Arts, 96(3), 167-178. 

Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. Scholastic.

Scieszka, J. (1989). The true story of the 3 little pigs! Puffin Books.

Tompkins, G. E.  (2012).  Teaching writing:  Balancing process and product (6th ed.). Pearson.

Woodson, J. (2014). Brown girl dreaming. Nancy Paulsen Books.