Lesson Three

LESSON THREE

You are gaining so much knowledge and practice on narrative writing. Lesson Two focused on two (of the four) different types of authors' points of view -- the First-person point of view and the Third-person point of view.

In the First-person point of view, the writer, or the narrator (someone who tells a story), is a character in the story. He/she uses first person pronouns such as the words I, me, my, mine, we, our, us, ours. First person means the speaker which in the case of narrative writing means the author or writer. 

The Third-person point of view is quite different from the First-person point of view. The Third-person point of view is one in which the narrator is not a character in the story but is an observer of it. An observer is "one who watches attentively and is aware."

In this Lesson, we will cover the Third-person limited point of view where the narrator sees the world through the eyes of one character and knows and relays the thoughts and actions of only this one character.

As stated earlier, the Third-person limited point of view is where the narrator sees the world through the eyes of one character and knows and relays the thoughts and actions of only this one character. The narrator follows this character throughout the entire composition. He cannot see into the thoughts of any other character. He cannot act for any other character.

In the Third-person limited point of view, third person personal pronouns are used. These pronouns include: he, him, his, she, her, hers, it, its, they, them, their, theirs.

Read the following narrative paragraph and notice that the writer is using the Third-person limited point of view. The narrator follows one character throughout the paragraph. The narrator cannot see into the thoughts and actions of the character.

EXAMPLE OF THIRD-PERSON LIMITED

“Day had dawned cold and gray when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail. He climbed the high earth-bank where a little-traveled trail led east through the pine forest. It was a high bank, and he paused to breathe at the top. He excused the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o’clock in the morning. There was no sun or promise of sun, although there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day. However, there seemed to be an indescribable darkness over the face of things. That was because the sun was absent from the sky. This fact did not worry the man. He was not alarmed by the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun.” (Excerpts from To Build a Fire by Jack London)

Please read the following narrative paragraph and pay attention to the highlighted third-person pronouns. Then answer the questions that follow the paragraph.

EXAMPLE OF THIRD-PERSON LIMITED

“Day had dawned cold and gray when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail. He climbed the high earth-bank where a little-traveled trail led east through the pine forest. It was a high bank, and he paused to breathe at the top. He excused the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o’clock in the morning. There was no sun or promise of sun, although there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day. However, there seemed to be an indescribable darkness over the face of things. That was because the sun was absent from the sky. This fact did not worry the man. He was not alarmed by the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun.” (Excerpts from To Build a Fire by Jack London)

The Third-person limited point of view is where the narrator sees the world through the eyes of one character and knows and relays the thoughts and actions of only this one character. Can you see how this is different from the first-person point of view?