Friday, April 10, 2015

What is the point of view of The Open Window and how can you tell?

In the short story, "The Open Window," by Saki, the author
uses a third-person omniscient point of view. What this means is that the narrator is a
not a part of the story but can share what the characters are thinking and feeling. The
reader learns about the characters from the third-person narrator as the narrator
conveys what the characters are thinking and feeling in the short
story:


For the most part, the narrator shares Framton
Nuttel's point of view. He is the one who is nervous, calling upon strangers. He is the
one who sits and listens to "Vera's tall tale, not knowing it is a far-fetched story. He
is the one who believes Vera's tall tale.


Also, the reader
believes Vera's tall tale and is just as engrossed in the story as Mr. Nuttel is. The
reader feels the eerie feeling as the men are heading toward the open
window.


Omniscient third-person point-of-view allows a
narrator to share a variety of points of view:


readability="7">

This allows a narrator to portray events from a
variety of points of view, conveying what all of the characters are doing and what they
are feeling or thinking.



We
learn from the narrator that Mr. Nuttel is truly afraid when he sees Mr. Sappleton and
his brothers-in-law coming toward the open window. We know what Mr. Nuttel is thinking
by the way he quickly runs away from the setting:


readability="12">

For most of the story, until he runs from the
house, the reader shares Mr. Nuttel's point of view. Like Mr. Nuttel, the reader is at
the mercy of Vera's story. The reader remains, however, after Mr. Nuttel has fled and
thus learns that Vera's story was nothing but a tall
tale.


No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the meaning of the 4th stanza of Eliot's Preludes, especially the lines "I am moved by fancies...Infinitely suffering thing".

A century old this year, T.S. Eliot's Preludes raises the curtain on his great modernist masterpieces, The Love...