When you tell your friends about something you experienced, you tell it from your perspective, or point of view. Telling a story in this way allows you to describe what you saw, thought, and did.
In literature, point of view is the perspective from which a story is told, and the narrator is the person telling the story. In first-person point of view, the narrator is a character inside the story. This type of narrator refers to himself or herself using the pronouns I and me. In third-person point of view, the narrator is outside the story and refers to the story's characters using the pronouns he, she, and/or they.
"I rode all morning long."
"She rode all morning long."
Later in this lesson, you'll need to know the difference between first- and third-person point of view when you introduce readers to the character you've created. Your sketch should be written in first-person point of view, like each of the chapters in Seedfolks.
How might Seedfolks have sounded if one narrator told the entire story in third-person point of view? Reread the first paragraph of the novel. Then compare it to the passage below.
Kim stood before the family altar. It was dawn. No one else in the apartment was awake. She stared at her father's photograph―his thin face stern, lips latched tight, his eyes peering permanently to the right. She was only nine years old. "Can you see me?" she asked the frozen image of her father.
Question
The last sentence of the third-person paragraph is quite different from the original. What effect is lost in this version?
