narrating : the power of points of view

The power of point of view in storytelling is potent. It is in fact on of the few things that separates a good writer from the mediocre and the bad.

When reading a book, I often find myself sometimes being strongly involved in the narrative, experiencing every bit of emotion within the pages, that the book becomes something powerful and alive. This I believe, comes from good narration, the authors complete control of the narrators point of view.

In a story, someone, somewhere is always telling it.

When taking creative writing in university, my lecturer, Mr. Raymer, would always stress on the importance of point of view. One of our exercises involves describing a room from the point of view of different objects in the room or the different people that might visit the room. We not only take into consideration the physical point of view of the person or object, but also the persons projected personality and state of mind. This all sounds mighty technical, but in truth, what we did was, we tried to think of ourselves as the person or object.

In Iain Pears book, An Instance of the Fingerpost, he exploits the power of point of view to the fullest, using 4 different narrators to tell of the events occuring during the year 1600's. Setting his tale in Oxford, these four men, write of the events concerning the death of a respected church member, Dr. Grove, and the events occuring in their lives at the time of his death, and how everything pieces together. He looks at how people can see the same thing differently, simply because they are seeing it through different state of minds, or personal beliefs and even because they have different values. Cola, the Venetian gentleman, sees everything is shades of bright green or sad grey, but none of the fiery red or dark black that surrounds Dr. Wallis, the cryptographer's narrative. This would call from Pears an intense in depth look into character and how we define ourselves, and others define us. For while the narrators would speak of themselves in one way, others could have a totally different point of view altogether.

Margaret Atwood has also exploited the power of point of view to a certain extent, though I must say not in the same circumstances as Pears has done, and perhaps not with the same impact, but effective nonetheless.

In The Robber Bride, three stories were also being told, interlaced around the death of a woman who affected the lives of the three narrators, in the same way, but under completely different circumstances. Here though, all three women have the same emotions regarding Zenia, their enemy, and see her as the same. Evil, dark and manipulative. However, before she became Zenia the Bad, she was Zenia the Friend to Tony the Historian, Zenia the Charity Case, to Charis the Hippy and Zenia the Women's Liberator to Roz the Millionaire. She was a women, seen from different point of views of the three when they were separate and then merged into one Zenia, when the three women united and had the same emotional attachment to her. It is the power of the storytellers to be able to delve so deeply into the minds of their characters that they can write out such realism, and bring readers deep into the minds of people, perhaps not so different from us.

Point of views, gives readers a chance to explore their own thoughts and ideas, and see how it is reflected in others. In An Instance of the Fingerpost, all four narrations, though mentioning same events and occurance, are different altogether, and adds an element of thought into the readers mind. Which is the true account? Or perhaps none are? Truth is perhaps only as true as we percieve it to be.

(written in August 2005)