Name: First person vs. Second person vs. Third person - Rebekah Bergman
Uploaded: 2020-06-29T02:55:50.000Z
Duration: 5 min 20 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Reflexive pronouns

“Mrs. Dalloway said she would  buy the flowers herself.”

“You are about to begin reading  Italo Calvino's new novel.”

These three opening lines,  from Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man,"

and Italo Calvino's  "If on a winter's night a traveler,"

each establish a different point of view.

Who is telling a story,  and from what perspective,

are some of the most important choices  an author makes.

Told from a different point of view,  a story can transform completely.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel," the Prince called, "let down your hair."

Rapunzel unbraided her hair  and slung it out the window.

The prince climbed her tresses  into the tower.

Rapunzel is typically told like this,  with the narrator outside the story.

This point of view is called third person.

But Rapunzel can also be told  by a character in the story—

The tail end of Rapunzel's locks  plopped down at my feet.

Strands came off all over me,  sticking to my sweat.

In a first person narrative, the story  can change dramatically

depending on which character is the narrator.

Say Rapunzel was narrating  instead of the prince:

I hope he appreciates how long it takes  to unbraid 25 feet of hair, I thought.

OUCH! I'll be honest; I thought my scalp would stretch off of my skull.

In second person, the narrator addresses  the story to the reader:

He calls your name. He wants you  to let your hair down.

You just finished braiding it, but hey– you don't get a lot of visitors.

Third person, first person,  and second person perspectives

each have unique possibilities and constraints.

So how do you choose a point  of view for your story?

Constraints aren't necessarily  a bad thing—

they can help focus a story  or highlight certain elements.

a third person narrator is necessarily a bit removed from the characters.

But that can be good for stories  where a feeling of distance is important.

A third person narrator  can be either limited,

meaning they stick close to one  character's thoughts and feelings,

or they can be omniscient,  able to flit between characters' minds

A first person story creates closeness  between the reader and the narrator.

It's also restricted  by the narrator's knowledge.

as the reader finds out information along with the character.

A first person narrator  doesn't necessarily

have to represent the character's  experience faithfully—

In Kazuo Ishiguro's novel  "The Remains of the Day,"

Stevens, an aging British butler in 1956,  recounts his many years of service,

but fails to acknowledge the flaws  of the man he serves.

The cracks in his narrative eventually  draw the reader's attention

to the under-acknowledged failings  of the culture and class system

begins with a plural  first person narrator:

“We were six snatching hands,  six stomping feet;

we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more.”

Partway through the story,  the point of view shifts

to first person singular, from we to I, as the boys come of age

and one brother feels alienated from the others.

It requires the writer to make the reader suspend disbelief to become another “you.”

Placing the reader  in a character's perspective

second person is intended to distance  the narrator from their own story,

rather than bring the reader closer  to the story.

second person narrators refer  to themselves as “you” rather than “I.”

Writers are constantly experimenting  with fresh variations on point of view.

New virtual and augmented  reality technologies

may expand the possibilities for this experimentation.

By placing people at a particular  vantage point in virtual space,

how might we change the way  we tell and experience stories?