“Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving and “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker are two unique stories with different point of narration. In “ Every Use.” The narrator of the story, Mrs. Johnson (Mama) gives information about her life and the difference between their daughters. The narrator used first person narration to provide a unique experience about this story, reading and understating the story from the prospective of the narrator (Mama). “Rip Van Winkle” The story was written in the third person narration (omniscient). The narrator is not a character in the story. However, he provides and comments information of all the characters thought and actions. This story has layered narrators, the omniscient voice of the narrator present us with the first person report of the fictional historian Diedrich Knickerbocker, who has explore and recorded the events of Rip Van Winkle’s stories. The difference between third person and first person narration makes “ Rip Van Winkle” a different kind of reading experience form “Everyday Use” as a result of how the narrator from each story tries to portrait their work to the reader. For example, in “Everyday Use” as a reader you can only experience the story through the main character eyes, from one point of view in this case from Mrs. Johnson (Mama). Indeed, you won’t know anything about the other people or events that this character has not personally experience. However, in the story “Rip Van Winkle” the reader has a wide image of every character in the story. In other words, as a reader you will see and experience the events and conflicts from each character’s point of view, thoughts and feelings of that moment. As an example, “Snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands and dumped them into Maggie’s lap. Maggie just sat there on my bed with her mouth open “ Take one or two of the other “ I said to Dee. But she turned without a word and went out to Hakim-a-barber. “ You just don’t understand,” she said, as Maggie and I came out to the car.” (7) Clearly you can see the first person narration limits the narrator to one perspective. However if these quotes were told in the third person narration the reader will portrait a complete image of all the thoughts and feelings of each character (Dee, Maggie, Mama). Writing from a third person point of view, the narrator provides the reader a better understanding of the story.
When reading your comparison it is very true with the way that you compared both articles. “Everyday use” really does limit the readers imagination when reading the story. On the other hand “Rip Van Winkle” does expand the readers imagination on what is going on and what Rip is experiencing and seeing from his point of view. Although “Everyday Use” does give us the readers a bit of description of the characters that the main character is interacting with it does not give the whole description on what else they see. I also do agree that 3rd person narrative is better when it comes to providing the readers a better understanding of the story rather than first person, since first person does not give the same experience with the reading than 3rd person.
I agree with this blog post such as the 1st point of view being used in “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker provides an limited insight into Mrs. Johnson life and what her perspective is about her two different daughters lives. I also agree with your point of being that the 1st point of view is limited as it only is told from one side. The “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving providing more point of views allows the reader to form their own opinion based on the different narrations and conflicts that arise. You are able to visualize a more detailed picture because of all the angles of information is given due to different perspective that aren’t necessarily present in “Everyday Walker”. The use of the quote from Alice Walker’s story used in the blog post is a good example as to why the one point of view doesn’t fully translate what Maggie is feeling onto the reader.
I agree with Luis, using different perspectives changes the way we as reader interpret a story. The third person perspective in “Rip Van Winkle” allows us to get a more complete and unbiased image of the world. The third person narration allows the author to add detail that he wouldn’t be able to in a first person view like in “Everyday Use”, where “Mama” is the only source and connection to the world in the story. That doesn’t mean that one method of writing is better than the other, what it shows is that depending on what kind of story you want to write, that perspective used can have a huge impact.
In “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving the author tells the story from a third point of view. This story is about a man who is very lazy and refuses to work and take care of his responsibilities. One day he decides to go off around some mountains and comes across some very different people from what he is accustomed to see around his village. One day he decides to go for a stroll with his dog and comes upon some very weird type of people. He does not notice when gets drunk until he regains conscious in what he believes is the following morning. He wakes up and proceeds to walk back to his village only to find out that he has been transported 20 years into the future. In this short novel the protagonist is being drawn out for us. In comparison to “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker the author describes the protagonist from 1st point of view. So all throughout the article we are hearing it from the protagonist who is living it day by day. Both of the articles are very different from one another. The protagonist from the first point of view are much more detailed in comparison to the protagonist being described in a third point of view
I agree that first person point of view limited the feelings and the events of other characters in the story, and a third person narrator reveals more of the important events that move the story along. Although in Rip Van Winkles the narrator didn’t narrate the feelings and events of everyone in the story. I would say the feelings and events that happen to Rip Van Winkles’s wife and daughter is important as well. A daughter who haven’t seen her father for 20 years and her mother died because of stress of the “runaway” husband is just going to accept her dad just come back from a very long sleep and allows him back in her life without showing some sort of anger or sadness? She seems to careless about her father disappearance. At least base on Mrs. Johnson’s description of Dee’s reaction we can tell Dee is some what frustrated with her Mom and Maggie about not letting her keeping the quill.
Washington Irving used quotes such as “He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands”, to describe the environment Rip Van Winkle was venturing off into. Irving’s description of the Catskill Mountains helped me as a reader understand that Rip Van Winkle was hiking through the high peaks of the area. Completely alone in solitude, Rip Van Winkle was able to get away from the yelling of his wife and focus on his inner peace. Irving’s descriptions of the wilderness also gave the story a sense of adventure.