First-person narration

As you can see, each example contains the exact same factual information, but each of the different points of view produces a distinctive effect. For example, first person narration is usually the most immediate—there is less distance between writer and reader, and using the first person usually creates a strong bond between the narrator and the audience. Sometimes, however, authors prefer to use... 

Usually, the best way to address a reader is formally. Use a professional and distanced point of view just as you would maintain both your professionalism and your distance in the courtroom. Do not address the reader as a friend (Hey, reader ). You are a writer and the reader is your audience, not an acquaintance. Similarly, do not address the reader in the second person (Hey, you ). It is also better not to use first person narration or the first person... 

First-person narration is when the narrator speaks of him- or herself 1 needed to find out. This point of view is generally limited to what the narrator knows at a given point in the story. 

Third-person subjective uses the "he" or "she" form, but is limited to the same point of view as first-person narration. In other words, I might describe the writing of this chapter as She sits at her desk and types, wondering if she ll meet her deadline. 

Remarque s book was the subject of great controversy for many reasons, but the motto we have just quoted and the end of the book, the death of the first-person narrator/diarist, Paul Baumer, caused at least one contemporary reviewer special perplexity. There is something curious about this, because it is probable, in my view, that precisely these two elements made the text legible to the millions who bought and read it. 

Malina charts the first-person narrator s relationships with her lover, Ivan, with her male flatmate Malina, and - via her dreams and memories - with her father, or, as one of the three chapter titles describes him, the third man . Although head over heels in love with Ivan, the narrator finds it difficult... 

The first-person narrator embodies this view of subjectivity as something which is fragmentary and non-unitary. It becomes clear to the reader that Malina is not so much a separate entity, an independent subject, but part of the narrator s own subjectivity, a kind of alter ego. A fortune-teller confirms that it s really not a picture of one person but of two people standing in extreme opposition to one another, it must mean that I am constantly apt to be torn in two (p. 163) and pities her for having to try constantly to reconcile the masculine and the feminine, reason and emotion, productivity and self-destruction. For the most part this is how the two characters are portrayed the narrator is sensitive, emotional, distracted, anguished, whereas Malina is rational, focused, practical and phlegmatic. Nevertheless, there are character qualities which do not fit into this neatly polarised scheme. Malina,... 

God, and their promise of a smoother route to the Celestial City presented benefits that made the risk of accidents along the way a risk worth taking. For all of Hawthorne s ridicule, his first-person narrator does want to take a ride on the Celestial Railroad to gratify a liberal curiosity. ... 

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