My favorite novel, A Clockwork Orange by Antony Burgess was written entirely in the first person point of view. One of the many advantages to this is was that I as a reader got extremely intimate with and engaged in the narrator’s story. However, the first person view can be very biased and one sided but it being so, evokes a sense of sympathy and compassion from the reader. The reader was able to appreciate that the narrator’s heinous actions were driven by choice and any attempt to amend this choice was an attack to his free will. A short story, “A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf uses point of view for many purposes including evoking suspense and curiosity. Point of view is one of the most important literally elements in a story and “A Haunted House” by Woolf proves this by its usage of various points of view throughout the story.
In “A Haunted House”, the narrator is a woman living with her husband who shares a house with a ghost couple. The ghosts whisper to the couple that they are seeking “it” in the house but do not make it clear as to what exactly they are looking for. The story is written in first, second and third-person perspectives, describing the search for “it” throughout the house. The story begins with you (the reader) living in a house where you are awoken by shutting downs and windows opening. The second person perspective is used here to immediately make the reader feel as if they are living in a haunted house which is what Woolf wants the readers to believe at first. Woolf then shifts the point of view to third person to directly quote the ghost couple discussing where “it” is, before shifting the point of view to first person. I thought it was a very unique way of introducing the characters to the reader.
Most of the story is told in the perspective of the narrator, who keeps on turning up “empty handed” as her search for “it” continues. Using first person point of view in this case builds suspense as the reader follows the narrator...