Literary terms · AP English Literature, AP English Language, SAT Reading and Writing, ACT Reading
Point of view
Also called: Narrative perspective
Point of view: The perspective from which a story is told, such as first person, third-person limited or third-person omniscient.
By the CollegePrepRoom editorial team · Updated · How we write and check these pages
What it means
Point of view determines what the reader can know. A first-person narrator tells the story from inside it; a third-person limited narrator follows one character's perceptions; an omniscient narrator can move among characters and comment freely. Each limits or expands access to thoughts and events.
Point of view shapes interpretation: the same events can feel different depending on who tells them and what they understand.
Example
A story told by a child narrator may describe adults' arguments without understanding them, letting readers grasp what the child cannot.
On the exam
In AP Lit prose passages, identifying the narration and its limits is often the key to explaining irony and complexity.
Lessons and practice questions
Related terms
- Unreliable narratorA narrator whose account cannot be fully trusted because of bias, limited knowledge, self-deception or dishonesty.
- Free indirect discourseThird-person narration that takes on a character's thoughts, voice and judgments without quotation marks or tags such as 'she thought'.
- SpeakerThe voice that speaks in a poem, treated as distinct from the poet.