I’ve been thinking a lot about first person point of view lately, partly because I’ve been reading this new book of contemporary persona poems, A Face to Meet the Faces, and partly because I’ve become addicted to New York magazine’s hilarious recaps of American Idol, a show I can no longer bear to watch.
These recaps, which are one writer’s narrative of watching the program, make clear that there is the story (in this case the show itself).
And then there is the way that the story is told.
In the best recaps, the snarky, first person narration turns American Idol into a satire of American commercialism rather than the sad, cynical thing that it has become (or maybe always was). The recaps make clear that who is telling the story matters, but more than that, the way they tell the story matters.
When I ask my students why they chose to write a story in first person, they almost always say it was because they wanted readers to feel close to the character. They almost never say it was because that character had a particularly interesting perspective on the events.
The thing students are often surprised to realize is that the telling of a story is an act in and of itself. And like any other act contained within the story, it should change the story.
Sometimes first person is a confession (“In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” by Amy Hempel), sometimes a defense (“Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville), sometimes an act of documentation (The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros), sometimes an act of defiance (The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood), sometimes an unintentional confession (The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro) and sometimes a far greater manipulation (Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Atonement by Ian McEwan). Only rarely, if ever, does first person seem to be a neutral documentation of an objective truth.
It’s a pretty common exercise to have students rewrite a tale from a new perspective (let the wolf tell “Red Riding Hood,” for example); this is a good exercise for emphasizing the idea that different characters will tell the same events differently. But the truth is, the same character is also capable of telling the same events differently, depending on the effect the writer is trying to have on the reader.
So lately I have been having my students rewrite stories not from a different point of view, but with a different intent. Having them rewrite a defense as a confession, for example. This reveals storytelling to be what it really is—an act not of narration, but of persuasion.
You’ve hit on a couple of ideas I’ve been talking about with my students. In the first case, I’ve been reading Moll Flanders with my Eighteenth Century students. We looked at a passage when Moll (now in her 50s) is in Newgate and reunites with her favorite husband. Jemy tells her of his adventures since they’d parted — and Moll leaves most of those out, explaining “that it is with great reluctance, that I decline the relating of them; but I consider that this is my own Story, not his.” Moll’s point here — and it’s a point that my students were a bit skeptical about initially, despite the words on the page — is that she controls the narrative. It’s her story and she’s the one who decides what’s included.
In the second case, I’ve been working with my students in Critical Thinking 102 on the idea of Point of View — and that different people have inherently different points of view. I had students rewrite the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece from the point of view of someone other than Jason. I think that the idea of having students rewrite something from the same point of view — but with a different purpose — would help them understand the complexities of point of view in general. And that it’s important to keep in mind that when someone tells you something, they have purpose in what they include, how they include it, and what they leave out.
You’ve make me want to drop everything I’m supposed to be doing right now and go write. Between your American Idol recaps link and the point of view activities, my mind is swimming in ideas. Thank you.