When the limited omniscient perspective is used, the writer also speaks in third person and tells the story from the point of view of a single major or minor character, "restricting information to what that character sees, hears, feels, and thinks" (Harmon 392). As Laurence Perrine says, the writer places himself at the side of a character and never leaves him. The writer may move in and out of the character, and he may interpret the character's thoughts and actions. The writer may know more about the character than does the character knows about himself, but the writer "shows no knowledge of what other characters are thinking or feeling or doing, except for what his chosen character knows or can infer" (163).

Perrine further notes some advantages and disadvantages of the limited omniscient perspective. Among the advantages is that it "approximates more closely than the omniscient the conditions of real life," while it also offers "a ready-made unifying element, since all details of the story are the experience of one person" (164). On the other hand, it restricts the field of vision to that one person which may cause problems for the writer in developing the plot since this character may not be cognizant of facts that would, for example, provide motivations for action. A clumsy author may therefore have to concoct means for his narrator to discover essential facts such as having him discover written notes or overhear conservations.

Another choice for a writer is the first person perspective. Frye, Baker, and Perkins observe that a first person narrator may assume one of three roles: first person as protagonist; first person as participant; and first person as observer (303). The first person protagonist is the hero or heroine of the story, the major actor at the heart of the conflict. The first person as participant would be a minor character, often the side kick or companion to the hero. Finally, the first person as observer is "a character without essential function except to observe and record" (303). Such an observer may be a fully developed character with a distinct personality, or nothing more than a voice whose sole purpose is to relay what has transpired.

Perrine points out that "the first-person point of view shares the virtues and limitations of the limited omniscient" (164). The first person narrator can only report "what he or she might reasonably be expected to experience first-hand, guess or infer from speech and actions, and learn from other characters or sources" (Barton and Hudson 114). Another disadvantage is that the author relinquishes the opportunity for direct interpretation. He is not free to step out of the story and comment on the characters or their actions, and in addition, "there is constant danger that the narrator may be made to transcend his sensitivity, his knowledge, or his powers of language in telling the story" (Perrine 165).

Among the advantages is a sense of immediacy and reality, as well as the opportunity for dramatic irony. The opportunity for irony emerges when an author as first person narrator creates a persona or mask through whom he speaks (Frye, Baker and Perkins 303). The persona may say things that the author does not agree with at all, and the contrast between the words of the persona and the real attitude of the author, as revealed in other details of the story, produces the irony. An example of dramatic irony is seen in the short story "Haircut" by Sherwood Anderson where the narrator thinks Jim a funny fellow, "a real card," when in fact he is a cruel, malicious drunk. When the narrator does not understand the import of what he is saying, as in this case, or his credibility is deliberately called into question, he is called unreliable (Hudson and Barton 115).

Akin to the unreliable narrator is the naive narrator. The difference is that the narrator's unreliability arises from the inexperience and innocence of the persona. This naiveté provides the incongruence between perception and reality necessary for irony. Twain's Huck Finn is a naive narrator. At times he expresses the conventional views of slavery, as for example, in saying that Jim's children are property that it would be wrong for Jim to reclaim as his own. The irony of this absurd conclusion is penetrating in itself, but in addition, the moral legitimacy of slavery is implicitly disavowed by Twain throughout the book and is ultimately signified by Huck's decision to go to hell rather than to betray Jim.

On the other hand, a persona may say things that the author believes, but does not want to state directly in his own voice. A writer may express his ideas indirectly "through the lips of a discerning and sympathetic narrator" ; however, Perrine warns that "such identifications of a narrator's attitude with the author's . . . must always be undertaken with extreme caution" and are only justified when the totality of the work supports such an inference (165). One example where the voice of the narrator and the conscience of the author are in concert is Frank O' Conner's story "Guest's of the Nation." The execution of the English prisoners produces within the narrator a bitterness and remorse that is authentic. Similarly, a reader would find it hard to mistake George Orwell's condemnation of capital punishment in his narrative essay, "A Hanging."

First person narratives may take the form of letters or journals. The epistolary novel may evoke a sense of reality and immediacy. A good example is Bram Stoker's Dracula which relates through letters Johnathan Harker's dawning realization of Count Dracula's true nature and the danger that Harker finds himself in. The sense of immediacy induces the same horror in the reader that the narrator experiences. But as Frye, Baker, and Perkins point out, a problem with the epistolary form is that "the use of several narrators exchanging letters . . . imposes on the author the necessity of devising styles appropriate to more than one persona" (304). Richardson's Clarissa illustrates a successful handling of this stylistic problem.

When first person narration is internalized, it becomes interior monologue. According to Harmon, the interior monologue is "a technique for presenting the stream of consciousness of a character" and "it assumes the unrestricted and uncensored portrayal of the totality of interior experience" (266). As such, it may present sensations and emotions through images and give the appearance "of being illogical and associational" (266). Harmon says further that the narration of the internal monologue may take either a direct or an indirect form. With the former, the narrator does not even seem to exist, and it is as if the reader were simply overhearing "an articulation of the the stream of thought and feeling flowing through the character's mind" (266). With the indirect method, "the author serves as selector, presenter, guide, and commentator" on the thoughts and feelings of the character whose mind he has entered. Frye, Baker, and Perkins remark that indirect interior monologue is "a form of third-person omniscient narration" that presents thoughts as seen from within the mind but expressed in the words of an external narrator" (244).

The final option for an author is the objective perspective. It is a form of third person narration, but it "rules out subjective commentary by the author" while still allowing "the omniscient privileges of movement in time and space as well as into and out of the minds of characters" ( 305). The narrator assumes a detached stance and is concerned only with reporting the facts, however horrendous or provoking they may be.

Frye, Baker, and Perkins point to the dramatic method as an extreme example of the objective point of view. Here, "a writer of fiction limits communication to the kind of evidence available to the viewers of a realistic stage play or to an invisible watcher positioned near the scene of the action" (305-306). All that is reported is what would be perceptible to such a watcher, thus eliminating remarks on motive or reports of thoughts other than when spoken aloud. The narrator does not intrude with comments or moral judgments and avoids adjectives and adverbs that suggest an attitude toward the action (306). This method is also sometimes called the scenic method and provides the ultimate example of the self-effacing author that Harmon defines as "an impersonal and nonevaluating medium thorough whom the story is witnessed" ( 463).

The concept of point of view not only pertains to who is telling the story but also to the relation of the narrator to the events in time. Is the narration an immediate minute-by-minute account of what is happening, or is the narrator separated from the action by a short or a long period of time? Barton and Hudson apply the term retrospective narration to a story told after a long period of time and offer Dicken's Great Expectations as an example. They note that "authors often employ this kind of narration to make the reader aware of an ironic gap between the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist as character and the experience and judgment of the protagonist as narrator" (115).

Finally, Harmon notes that "since about the middle of the nineteenth century, a particular sort of novel, defined by its artistic management of point of view, has become a favorite: a charismatic but mysterious hero (Heathcliff, Ahab, Holmes, Kurtz, Gatsby, Leverkuhn, Willy Stark, McMurphy, Seymour Glass) is presented by a bureaucratic but sympathetic narrator (Lockwood, Ishmael, Watson, Marlow, Caraway, Zeitblom, Jack Burden, Bromden, Buddy Glass)(392).