Point of View

Information

In the first-person point of view one character tells the story. This character reveals only personal thoughts and feelings of what s/he sees. The writer uses pronouns such as "I“, "me“, “mine”, or "my".

Example:
I woke up this morning feeling terrific. I hopped out of bed excited to start the new day. I knew that today was the day my big surprise would come.

With the second-person point of view the narrator tells the story using the pronoun "you". The character is someone similar to you.

Example:
You wake up feeling really terrific. Then you hop out of bed excited to start the new day. You know that today is the day that your big surprise will come.

This is rarely used in literature. It can be seen in Choose Your Own Adventure books.

The third-person point of view is the most commonly used in fiction. When writing in the third-person you will use pronouns such as "he", "she", or "it".

Example:
Brian woke up feeling terrific. He hopped out of bed excited to start the new day. He knew that today was the day that his big surprise would come.

Practice

Online Practice

List which point of view Gary Paulsen uses in each of the following excerpts from his books. Write first, second, or third on each blank space before the excerpt.

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1. __________________	Excerpt from Woodsong by Gary Paulsen I go up to the front of the team in the darkness and drag them around, realizing we are lost. My clothes have been ripped on tree limbs and my face is bleeding from cuts, and when I look back down the side of the mountain we have just climbed I see twenty-seven head lamps bobbing up the trail. Twenty-seven teams have taken our smell as the valid trail and are following us. Twenty-seven teams must be met head on in the narrow brush and passed and told to turn around.
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2. __________________	Excerpted from Soldier's Heart by Gary Paulsen There would be a shooting war. There were rebels who had violated the law and fired on Fort Sumter and the only thing they'd respect was steel, it was said, and he knew they were right, and the Union was right, and one other thing they said as well--if a man didn't hurry he'd miss it. The only shooting war to come in a man's life and if a man didn't step right along he'd miss the whole thing. Charley didn't figure to miss it. The only problem was that Charley wasn't rightly a man yet, at least not to the army. He was fifteen and while he worked as a man worked, in the fields all of a day and into night, and looked like a man standing tall and just a bit thin with hands so big they covered a stove lid, he didn't make a beard yet and his voice had only just dropped enough so he could talk with men.
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3. __________________	Excerpted from Father Water, Mother Woods by Gary Paulsen It started that simply. At the courthouse or the library there was a large bulletin board, and for a dollar you could sign the board and write down your guess to win the car-through-the-ice raffle. Of course, you never met anyone who had won, but only those who knew somebody who had won, and therein, in the winning, the simplicity was lost.
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4. __________________	Excerpted from Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen A "Tonight we just do A." He sat back on his heels and pointed. "There it be." I looked at it, wondered how it stood. "Where's the bottom to it?" "There it stands on two feet, just like you." "What does it mean?" "It means A--just like I said. It's the first letter in the alphabet. And when you see it you make a sound like this: ayyy, or ahhhh." "That's reading? To make that sound?" He nodded. "When you see that letter on paper or a sack or in the dirt you make one of those sounds. That's reading."
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5. __________________	Excerpted from Caught by the Sea by Gary Paulsen I drove to California that very day, straight to the coast, then north, away from people, to a small town named Guadalupe, near Santa Maria. There I bought some cans of beans and bread and Spam and fruit cocktail and a cheap sleeping bag and then walked out through the sand dunes, where I could hear the surf crashing. I walked until I could see the water coming in, rolling in from the vastness, and I sat down and let the sea heal me.
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6. __________________	Excerpted from Guts by Gary Paulsen I have spent an inordinate amount of time in wilderness woods, much of it in northern Minnesota, some in Canada and some in the Alaskan wilds. I have hunted and trapped and fished and have been exposed to almost all kinds of wilderness animals; I’ve had bear come at me, been stalked by a mountain lion, been bitten by snakes and punctured by porcupines and torn by foxes and once pecked by an attacking raven, but I have never seen anything rivaling the madness that seems to infect a large portion of the moose family.
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7. __________________	Excerpted from Winterkill by Gary Paulsen And I would like to stop the story of Duda here and tell how he got his divorce and married Bonnie and they adopted me and we bought a farm . . . . That's how it would end in a movie, with Rock Hudson playing Duda and Doris Day playing Bonnie, and that's how it should end, and that's how I dream of it ending almost every night, until I wake up sweating and remember that it isn't a movie and it doesn't end that way.

8. Choose the sentence that is written using a first person point of view.
A. While walking home, he tripped and fell into a puddle of water. B. I believe that it’s important for students to be involved in after school activities. C. The City Council should reconsider its recent vote on a tax increase. D. Citizens need to exercise their right to vote in the next election.

9. Choose the sentence that is written using a third person point of view.
A. Several of their players have signed scholarships to play college football. B. You should know better than to send a text message while driving! C. We need to take our time on this project; we could both use a good grade. D. The red car with the black convertible top is mine.

10. Choose the sentence that is written using a first person point of view.
A. You need to do your best on the English test tomorrow. B. Would you please pass the mashed potatoes? C. Softball is my favorite sport, but soccer is a close second. D. Darrell went to the movies with John this weekend.

11. Determine the point of view of the following passage.

Walking home, I heard someone running behind me. I was frightened. A tall man ran by me. He raced to an emergency police phone and frantically began pushing buttons. The man brushed sweat from his forehead and then noticed me standing there. “Hurry,” he began, “we need to get out of here quickly. There’s been an accident at the plant.”

What point of view is used in this passage?

A. first person

B. second person

C. third person

D. fourth person

12. Read the following excerpt from O. Henry’s The Ransom of Red Chief and determine the point of view. “IT LOOKED like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama -- Bill Driscoll and myself -- when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, "during a moment of temporary mental apparition"; but we didn't find that out till later.”
A. first person B. second person C. third person D. fourth person

More Information

Third-person point of view may be written using several variations.

In the third-person objective the story is told without describing any character's thoughts, opinions, or feelings. Think of this as seeing what a camera can see. A camera can not see what is going on inside someone’s mind.

In the third-person omniscient, the reader knows exactly what is going on inside various characters’ heads in regards to their thoughts and feelings.

Example from Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen

Although Samuel's parents lived in the wilderness, they were not a part of it. They had been raised in towns and had been educated in schools where they'd been taught to read and write and play musical instruments. They moved west when Samuel was a baby, so that they could devote themselves to a quiet life of hard physical work and contemplation. They loved the woods, but they did not understand them. Not like Samuel.

(Here the reader knows both the parents’ and Samuel’s feelings.)

In third-person limited, the reader knows only one character's mind, either throughout the entire work or in a specific section. The narration is limited to what can be known, seen, thought, or judged from a single character's perspective.

More Practice