Lecture 17: He, She, It—Third-Person Point of View
you lose that distinctive voice. In contrast, in the close third person, you
can dive as deeply into your characters’ minds as Virginia Woolf does in
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o The moment in +XFNOHEHUU\)LQQ where Huck decides to help
Jim win his freedom—“All right then, I’ll go to hell”—would
not be nearly as thrilling in the close third person because much
of the scene’s power comes from watching Huck work out the
problem for himself.o By the same token, the scene in 0UV'DOORZD\ where Clarissa
looks into a shop window and her mind skips around with
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intimate but slightly remote view afforded by the close third
person allows us to understand Clarissa even better than she
understands herself.z With the close third person, you also can switch from one character to
another with relative ease, avoiding the need to reinvent the voice of
the narration each time. In other words, you can use the same authorial
voice to evoke different characters.
o The most bravura example of this, of course, is 0UV'DOORZD\,
which often switches point of view within a scene. In most
instances, however, writers shift point of view from chapter to
chapter. This technique broadens the scope of the story beyond
what only one character can know.o Alternating points of view in the close third person is a
powerful way to tell a long story because it gives you the best
of both worlds: Each chapter allows you to inhabit the mind
of a single character, but by changing the point of view, you
can broaden the scope of the narrative and present different
perspectives on the same events. At the most mechanical level,
this technique ensures that the reader is present for all the
important scenes.z You can add another dimension to the close third person by including
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