Comments on: First Person Point of View and the Act of Storytelling http://litbits.tengrrl.com/2012/02/27/first-person-point-of-view-and-the-act-of-storytelling/ Just another WordPress site Tue, 28 Feb 2012 20:15:27 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.2 By: Traci Gardner http://litbits.tengrrl.com/2012/02/27/first-person-point-of-view-and-the-act-of-storytelling/#comment-291 Tue, 28 Feb 2012 20:15:27 +0000 http://blogs.bedfordstmartins.com/litbits/?p=5407#comment-291 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.

]]> By: Emily, Chowan University http://litbits.tengrrl.com/2012/02/27/first-person-point-of-view-and-the-act-of-storytelling/#comment-290 Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:44:48 +0000 http://blogs.bedfordstmartins.com/litbits/?p=5407#comment-290 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.

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