Transcript Story Elements

Story Elements
NARRATION – POINT OF VIEW
First-Person Point of View
In the first-person point of view one
character tells the story. This character reveals
only personal thoughts and feelings of what he
or she 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.
Second-Person Point of View
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.
Third-Person Point of View
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:
Brianwoke 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.
Task 1
Which of the following SEVEN excerpts
are written in first, second, or thirdpoint of view?
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 twentyseven head lamps bobbing up the trail.
Twenty-seven teams have taken our smell as
the valid trail and are following us. Twentyseven teams must be met head on in the
narrow brush and passed and told to turn
around.
Excerpt 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.
Excerpt 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.
Excerpt 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."
Excerpt 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.
Excerpt 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.
Excerpt 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.
ANSWERS
Woodsong = First-Person Point of View
Soldier's Heart = Third-Person Point of View
Father Water, Mother Woods = Second-Person
Point of View
Nightjohn = First-Person Point of View
Caught by the Sea = First-Person Point of View
Guts = First-Person Point of View
Winterkill = First-Person Point of View
OBJECTIVE / OMNISCIENT / LIMITED
Third Person
The most common narrative point-of-view is THIRD
PERSON.
There are THREE types of third person point-of-view:
• OBJECTIVE
• OMNISCIENT
• LIMITED
Third-Person Objective point of view
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.
Example
The alarm clock sounded. Brian cut off the
clock and jumped out of bed. He had a smile
on his face.
Third-Person Omniscient point of view
In the third-person omniscient, the reader
knows exactly what is going on inside various
characters’ heads in regards to their thoughts
and feelings.
Jo was
sad.
Tim
couldn’t
understand.
Third-Person Omniscient point of view
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.)
Third-Person Limited point of view
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.
Sally wondered what
the boys were
thinking.
Task 2
Identify the point of view of the
following THREE selections:
1. The three with the medals were like hunting-hawks;
and I was not a hawk, although I might seem a hawk to
those who had never hunted; they, the three, knew
better, and so we drifted apart.
2. Judith had studied hard for the test, and she
though she had understood the material. Now that it
was over, she just didn’t know. For some reason, her
mind just went blank at the start of the test! Now
she wondered about her answers—were they too
short? should she have added more details? She just
wasn’t sure!
3. “What’s that sound in the attic?” thought Angela. “It
sounds like ghosts playing marbles.” The thought of
ghosts having a game of marbles in the attic made her
smile. She was almost tempted to go upstairs and join
them, but she still had an essay to finish, and had
frequently been distracted that afternoon by the sound
of light scampering on her roof. A squirrel sitting in a
tree near the window chewed on an acorn thoughtfully
and watched intently as Angela went back to her
homework.
Answers
1. first person
2.third person limited
3.third person omniscient
Task 3
What type of point of view are the following TEN
excerpts?
• OBJECTIVE
• OMNISCIENT
• LIMITED
• or FIRST
From Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
So he turned and started walking north on Hector, right
down the middle of the street, right down the invisible
chalk line that divided East End from West End. Cars
beeped at him, drivers hollered, but he never flinched.
The Cobras kept right along with him on their side of the
street. So did a bunch of East Enders on their side. One
of them was Mars Bar. Both sides were calling for him to
come over.
Point of view? _____________________________
Fact or Opinion? – An invisible chalk line divided East
End from West End.
From From the Mixed-Up files of Mrs. Basil E.
Frankweiler, by E. L. Konigsburg
Claudia was furious . . . She refused to look at Jamie again
and instead stared at the statue. The sound of footsteps
broke the silence and her concentration. Footsteps from
the Italian Renaissance were descending upon them! The
guard was coming down the steps. There was just too much
time before the museum opened on Sundays. They should
have been in hiding already. Here they were out in the
open with a light on!
Point of View? __________________________
Fact or Opinion? – The museum was closed on Sundays.
From The Twenty-One Balloons by William
Pene du Bois
It is funny that my trip has ended by being such a fast
trip around the world. I find myself referred to now as
one of the speediest travelers of all times. Speed wasn’t
at all what I had in mind when I started out. On the
contrary, if all had gone the way I had hoped, I would
still be happily floating around in my balloon, drifting
anywhere the wind cared to carry me – East, West,
North, or South.
Point of View? _________________________
Fact or Opinion – He was one of the speediest travelers
of all times.
From Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
One of the soldiers, the taller one, moved toward her.
Annemarie recognized him as the one she and Ellen
always called, in whispers, “the Giraffe” because of his
height and the long neck that extended from his stiff
collar. He and his partner were always on this corner.
He prodded the corner of her backpack with the stock of
his rifle. Annemarie trembled.
“What is in here?” he asked loudly.
“Schoolbooks,” she answered truthfully.
Point of View? ____________________________
Fact or Opinion? – One of the soldiers was as tall as a
giraffe.
From Missing May by Cynthia Rylant
The day after May didn’t come to us, OB didn’t get out
of bed. He didn’t get me up either, and from a bad
dream I woke with a start, knowing things were wrong,
knowing that I had missed something vitally important.
Among these, of course, was the school bus. It was
Monday, and OB should have called me out of bed at
five-thirty, but he didn’t, and when I finally woke at
seven o’clock, it was too late to set the day straight.
Point of View? ____________________________
Fact or Opinion? – “...it was too late to set the day
straight.”
From The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by
C.S. Lewis
He himself was a very old man with shaggy white hair
which grew over most of his face as well as on his
head, and they liked him almost at once. But on the first
evening when he came to meet them at the front
door he was so odd-looking that Lucy (who was the
youngest) was a little afraid of him, and Edmund (who
was the next youngest) wanted to laugh and had to keep
on pretending he was blowing his nose to hide it.
Point of View? __________________________
Fact or Opinion? – “. . . he was so odd-looking.”
From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by
Maya Angelou
For one whole semester the streetcars and I shimmied
up and scooted down the sheer hills of San Francisco.
I lost some of my need for the Black ghetto’s shieldingsponge quality, as I clanged and cleared my way down
Market Street, with its honky-tonk homes from
homeless sailors, past the quiet retreat of Golden Gate
Park and along closed undwelled-in-looking dwellings
of the Sunset District.
Point of View? ___________________________
Fact or Opinion? – Golden Gate park is a quiet
retreat.
From The Olympic Games by Theodore Knight
While still a teenager, Lee met and began to train with
some of the best divers in the country, among them
several former Olympians. One former champion – Farid
Simaika the Egyptian 1928 silver medalist who had moved
to this country—gave Lee a piece of advice that he took to
heart. He told the young diver that he might encounter
prejudice in competition because he was of Korean
descent. Simaika told Lee he would simply have to work
twice as hard as other athletes. “You’ve go to be so much
better that they have to give you the medal,” Simaika said.
Point of View? ____________________________
Fact or Opinion? - “Lee met and began to train with . . .
several former Olympians.”
From “Through the Tunnel” by Doris Lessing
He was an only child, eleven years old. She was a widow.
She was determined to be neither possessive nor lacking in
devotion. She went worrying off to her beach.
As for Jerry, once he saw that his mother had gained her
beach, he began the steep descent to the bay. From where
he was, high up among red-brown rocks, it was a scoop of
moving bluish green fringed with white. As he went lower,
he saw that it spread among small promontories and inlets
of rough, sharp rock, and the crisping, lapping surface
showed stains of purple and darker blue.
Point of View? ___________________________
Fact or Opinion? – “He was an only child, eleven years
old. She was a widow.”
From “Pictures on a Rock” by Brent
Ashabranner
One spring day a few years before the Rough Rock
Demonstration School was opened, a five-year-old
Navajo boy named Fred Bia was watching the family
sheep flock in the arid countryside near the little town.
It was his daily chore to follow the sheep as they drifted
over the red, rocky earth in their endless search for
grass and leaves of semi-desert plants.
Point of View? _________________________
Fact or Opinion? – ”It was his daily chore to follow the
sheep . . .”
Answers
1. From Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli - third person limited (“Kept
right along” – tone)
2. From From the Mixed-Up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E. L.
Konigsburg - third person limited
3. From The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois - first person
4. From Number the Stars by Lois Lowry - third person limited
5. From Missing May by Cynthia Rylant - first person
6. From The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis - third
person omniscient
7. From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou - first person
8. From The Olympic Games by Theodore Knight - third person limited
9. From “Through the Tunnel” by Doris Lessing - third person omniscient
10.From “Pictures on a Rock” by Brent Ashabranner - third person limited