Topic 2: Discuss Interior Monologue and Subjective Narrative

Q: What does each point of view do for the writer, or allow the writer to do?

Q: How would you use each point of view?

1. As illustrated by the piece “I stand here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen, the interior monologue allows the writer to develop the internal context of the character.  This particular example illustrates how stream of consciousness style narrative can convey the psychology that defines the mother through her analysis of the daughter.  Subject narration, on the other hand, allows the reader to fill in the reactive details.  In the short story “Why, you reckon?” by Langston Hughes, the reader is only provided enough information about the narrative voice to make association.  By leaving out most of the dialogue and telling the story from an observer’s perspective, Hughes leaves just enough to allow the reader to identify themselves within the story, as though they are standing in the room watching the events unfold in person.

2. Each point of view is useful for carving out a very different role for the reader.  For instance, in the recounting of an everyday event (ie daily train commute) can be transformed from banal to fascinating by revealing the thoughts of a neurotic office worker, or by narrating little noticed details of a hidden ordeal seen by a quiet onlooker.  It would be interesting to lay out a plot using both tools to convey the duality of a situation, or, perhaps, even the duality of one person (but, of course, a most suspenseful twist like that would not be revealed until the end).