Point of View, Short Stories

In the short story “The Interlopers” written by Saki, the point of view in the story is third person omniscient. Through out the story the reader is given insight of the past and thoughts of both main characters of Georg Znaeym and Ulrich von Gradwitz. The reader is told why these two men and their families have such a deep hatred for one another. From this point of view the reader finds out the truth about the story, about the lawsuits and the bitter relationships going through three generations, leading up to the two men Georg and Ulrich. Is this background knowledge was given from a first person point of view the reader could have been given false information coming from only one side of the argument between the families. This shows how most of the time a third person point of view could be more truthful and more reliable than a first person point of view. In the second short story “A&P” written by John Updike, the point of view in the story is first person. Throughout the story the reader is taken through the story as the main character, a young 19 year old male who seems to be attracted to most of the girls he notices. The reader sees only his thoughts and motivations of his actions, this gets the reader closer to the main character than a third person point of view. The reader gets to see through the eyes of Sammy, what he sees, what he thinks, and why he thinks like that. An example is how the author writes about Sammy analyzing the girls and how he analyzes the girls, such as how he imagines girls lifestyles based on what they purchase in the store or what they are wearing while in the shop. The reader is also shown from first person of Sammy that he is very distracted and mainly thinks about the girls, as he describes “...so there was nothing much to do except lean on the register and wait for the girls to show up again. If the reader was given a first person point of view of Sammy instead of first person point of view, the story wouldn't be so immersive in the thoughts and actions of the main character. In the story “The Accident” written by Dave Eggers, the point of view in the story is second person. The point of view that the story is written in provides a sense that “you” went through that very experience. The author wrote in this way to make the reader believe they have been in this situation or they are in this situation. It puts the reader, not as another character but as themselves, in the shoes of the main character. In the story the reader gets the idea that they were the ones to get in the car crash this seems to lead to what “you” would think or feel in the story. If the story was not second person you wouldn't get the illusion that you were the character, but rather just in the mind of another person with their thoughts and not your own.