Discussion Topic

The point of view in "Vanka."

Summary:

The point of view in "Vanka" is third-person limited. The story is narrated from the perspective of Vanka, a nine-year-old boy, providing insights into his thoughts and feelings as he writes a letter to his grandfather, expressing his longing to escape his harsh life as an apprentice.

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Does the story "Vanka" use both first person and third person limited points of view?

In "Vanka" by Anton Chekhov, the narrative is interlaced with epistolary passages. An epistolary passage is one in which a character either writes a letter (epistle) or reads a letter. In this case, the epistolary passages comprise a letter being written by Vanka. In an epistle, the point of view is generally first person (unless perhaps the content is of the they said/you said variety). However, when an epistle is embedded in a larger narrative, the epistle takes on the role of a dialogic insertion (dialogic: pertaining to dialogue) and is analysed as any other dialogic passage would be.

Consequently, since dialogue in a narrative doesn't not change the story's point of view, neither does a dialogic epistolary insertion in a narrative change the story's point of view. Therefore, the first person point of view within the the epistle doesn't affect the analysis of the point of...

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view of the story. If you look at the text of "Vanka," you can see that this is true because the epistolary passages are all set off by quotation marks--they are considered and analyzed as dialogue.

The conclusion is that, while the point of view within the dialogic epistolary insertions is first person, the story of "Vanka" is written solely in the third person limited point of view: The narrator sees and conveys the story while looking over the shoulder--if you will--of Vanka while he writes his letter. So even though Vanka's voice intrudes into the narrative, it is spoken, as it were, by the third person limited narratorial voice, a voice that is, so to speak, reading aloud to the story reader from Vanka's private letter. Thus it is incorrect to state that the short story "Vanka" has two points of view: "Vanka" has one point of view (third person limited) and the embedded epistolary dialogue (letter) presents an embedded first person point of view.

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Is the point of view in "Vanka" first person and first person observer?

Point of view is an important aspect of any piece of literature as it can critically affect the tone and mood of a story. The person who relates the story to the reader is the narrator. Therefore the story is being told from the narrator's point of view, and there are several points of view of which you need to be aware.

First Person Point of View
With a first person pov, the narrator is an actual character in the story. With a first person narrator, the reader needs to be mindful that we are only hearing the story from one perspective, consequently the information we get from the narrator might not be truthful. As conscientious readers, we need to keep this in mind and decide if the narrator is an honest and trustworthy character.

Third Person Point of View
With the third person pov, the narrator is not a character in the story. Because the narrator is on the outside looking in, we are able to learn about how the characters feel and what they do. There are two types of third person pov.

  • Third person Omniscient: With this type of pov, the narrator is like God--all seeing and all knowing. We learn everything about all of the characters.
  • Third person limited:With this pov, the narrator has limited knowledge of only a few characters.

Objective Point of View
This type of pov is not used much in high school literature, but with this type, the narrator simply tells what can be observed from the plot, action, dialogue, and etc. of the story. We as readers don't know what the characters think or feel.

Hope this helps.

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