What is the point of view of "The Open Window" and how do you determine it?
In the short story, "The Open Window," by Saki, the author uses a third-person omniscient point of view. What this means is that the narrator is a not a part of the story but can share what the characters are thinking and feeling. The reader learns about the characters from the third-person narrator as the narrator conveys what the characters are thinking and feeling in the short story:
For the most part, the narrator shares Framton Nuttel's point of view. He is the one who is nervous, calling upon strangers. He is the one who sits and listens to "Vera's tall tale, not knowing it is a far-fetched story. He is the one who believes Vera's tall tale.
Also, the reader believes Vera's tall tale and is just as engrossed in the story as Mr. Nuttel is. The reader feels the eerie feeling as the men are...
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heading toward the open window.
Omniscient third-person point-of-view allows a narrator to share a variety of points of view:
This allows a narrator to portray events from a variety of points of view, conveying what all of the characters are doing and what they are feeling or thinking.
We learn from the narrator that Mr. Nuttel is truly afraid when he sees Mr. Sappleton and his brothers-in-law coming toward the open window. We know what Mr. Nuttel is thinking by the way he quickly runs away from the setting:
For most of the story, until he runs from the house, the reader shares Mr. Nuttel's point of view. Like Mr. Nuttel, the reader is at the mercy of Vera's story. The reader remains, however, after Mr. Nuttel has fled and thus learns that Vera's story was nothing but a tall tale.
What is the point of view in "The Open Window," and does it change?
This story is told from a third-person limited omniscient point of view. This means that the narrator knows the thoughts and feelings of one character and can report them to us. Often this perspective is used to help us sympathize more deeply with the character of whose thoughts we are told. We get quite a bit of Framton Nuttel's thoughts: he wonders about his sister's feelings regarding Mrs. Sappleton, ponders the woman's marriage state, experiences horror regarding the story Vera tells him about Mrs. Sappleton's dead husband and brothers, and tried to turn the topic of conversation to the subject of his personal ailments because of his "delusion" that everyone is interested. We really do not get any descriptions of Mrs. Sappleton's private thoughts: she expresses them either in word or gesture. Early on, the narrator does say that Vera "judged that [she and Framton] had had sufficient silent communication," but this could be inferred as a result of the fact that she begins to speak rather than taken as a description of her private thoughts. However, in the end, the narrator does tell us that "Romance at short notice was [Vera's] speciality"; I would argue that we might also be able to infer this from the two obviously false (and quite creative) stories we have seen her generate on incredibly short notice. It is not necessarily the revelation of a private thought, but, perhaps, a description of the behavior she has exhibited during the story. Therefore, I would argue that the perspective remains the same throughout.
This story is told by an omniscient third person narrator who focuses the story on the reactions of Framton Nuttel to the tale Vera tells him. We can tell the narrator is ominiscient because at the end of the story, Nuttel runs out of the room and the narrator reveals that ''romance at short notice" is Vera's specialty. In other words, Vera loves to make up stories at a moment's notice and then watch people's reactions to them. She continues this after Nuttel leaves with another story about why he left so quickly.