Distance And Point Of View Summary

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In his essay, “Distance and Point of View”, Wayne Booth is concerned about the different ways and methods that an author attains an “inside view” through the numerous selections of narration. Certain qualities are gifted to the narrator depending on the desired outcome of the novel. Regardless of person, all of the narrative techniques are offered to any and all narrators. Although, when readers put stories in categories based on their person, Booth states that this actually shows nothing about the work or point of view. Booth writes, “To say that a story is told in the first or the third person, and to group novels into one or the other kind, will tell us nothing of importance unless we become more precise and describe how the particular qualities…show more content…
This stylistic technique is called “omniscience” when it is used through a third-person narrator, but it is labeled “inference” when it is used by a first-person narrator. Although, the terminology cannot conceal that the techniques are the same. For instance, each narrator is given “privilege” or the right to inform readers of a character’s thoughts and feelings, or they are “limited” from such knowledge (Booth 128). Then, there are dramatized and undramatized narrators. Typically, the first-person narrator, who often participates in the action in the story, is a dramatized narrator. This narrator is also defined as the author’s “second self”, because he or she is “a highly refined and selected version, wiser, more sensitive, more perceptive than any real man could be” (Booth 121). The undramatized narrator is usually the narrator that speaks in third person. This narrator is not normally involved with the characters in the novel and is “presented as passing through the consciousness of a teller” (Booth 121). Instead, they usually observe and comment on the actions that are narrated. The narrator-agent is defined as being involved in the story, but he or she presents less emotional distance and often plays off of the reader’s emotions. The observer is not personally involved with the story, but he or she places an emotional distance between the reader and the work itself. Each narrator can also “relay their tales to us primarily as scene, summary, or a combination of the two” (Booth 123). Although each narrator is able to relay some sort of story to the reader, “it is likely to tell us very little until we specify the kind of narrator who is providing the scene or the summary” (Booth 123). Both types of narrators can relay “commentary” that relate to the scene or story, are aware of themselves, and present different degrees of

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