Point of view

The position or vantage-point from which the events of a story seem to be observed and presented to us. The chief distinction usually made between points of view is that between third-person narratives and first-person narratives. A third-person narrator may be omniscient, and therefore show an unrestricted knowledge of the story's events from outside or 'above' them; but another kind of third-person narrator may confine our knowledge of events to whatever is observed by a single character or small group of characters, this method being known as 'limited point of view' (see focalization). A first-person narrator's point of view will normally berestricted to his or her partial knowledge and experience, and therefore will not give us access to other characters' hidden thoughts. Many modern authors have also used 'multiple point of view', in which we are shown the events from the positions of two or more different characters.