Craft and Structure · Lesson 5

Characters' and narrators' points of view

In fiction, a single paragraph can hold several points of view. The narrator tells what happens, and the characters have their own beliefs, worries, and plans. Many ACT-style questions ask you to sort these out: whose opinion is this, and does the narrator share it?

Read each sentence and ask who is speaking or thinking. Signal verbs and phrases tell you when a sentence belongs to a character: she was certain, he believed, she suspected, to him, in her view. A sentence with one of these reports what the character thinks; it does not tell you the thing is true. A sentence with no signal, such as “The radio was scratched,” usually reports the story's events. But sentences that follow a signal and explain it often continue that character's view, as the sentences after “Nadia was certain” do in paragraph 3.

Two special cases come up often. A narrator who says I may be looking back, so the older narrator's view (“I see now that...”) can differ from what the younger self believed at the time. And a narrator may report a character's certainty and then let later events prove it wrong without ever saying so. In both cases, answer with the view of the person the question names, at the moment the question names.

Whose view is it?
Sentence in a storyWhose view?Clue in the text
Jun was sure the bus had left.Jun'swas sure: a belief, which may be wrong
The bus pulled in two minutes later.The narrator's reportNo signal verb; an event
To Ana, the plan seemed reckless.Ana'sTo Ana, seemed
Back then I thought the lake was huge.The younger self'sBack then I thought

The Clock Radio

This passage is from a short story about a brother and sister who run a repair shop.

1The shop had belonged to their father, and for eleven years it had carried his name above the door: Okafor Repairs, Radios and Small Appliances. Now it belonged to Nadia and her younger brother, Simon, though they agreed on almost nothing about what it should become.

2On Tuesday morning a woman set a clock radio on the counter. Its wooden case was scratched, one dial was missing, and when Simon plugged it in, it gave a single dry crackle and went silent. The woman explained that it had sat on her kitchen windowsill for as long as she could remember. She did not ask what it would cost. She asked whether it could be saved.

3Nadia was certain it could not. Parts for a radio that old would have to be hunted down one at a time, and the hours alone would cost more than a new radio with twice the features. She had made this calculation many times, and the numbers had never once come out in favor of nostalgia. She began, gently, to say so.

4Simon was already lifting the back panel. To him the radio was not a calculation but a puzzle, and the silence had told him something. A set that was truly finished, he believed, did not crackle at all. That single sound meant the power was getting through and something small, a loose wire or a tired part, was blocking the rest. He said none of this aloud. He only asked the woman whether she could leave it until Friday.

5After she left, Nadia leaned against the workbench and watched him. “You know we'll lose money on it,” she said.

6“Probably,” Simon said, without looking up.

7She did not argue further. It had always been this way between them: she kept the ledger, and he kept the shop interesting, and their father had liked to say that a business needed both, though he never said which mattered more. Nadia suspected he had been too kind to choose.

8On Thursday evening the radio came back to life in the middle of a weather report, the announcer's voice faint and then suddenly clear. Simon turned the volume up and grinned at his sister. Nadia shook her head, but she stayed to listen until the forecast ended, and that night, for the first time in months, she did not open the ledger before going home.

Worked example Easy

Show the whole passage

The Clock Radio

This passage is from a short story about a brother and sister who run a repair shop.

1The shop had belonged to their father, and for eleven years it had carried his name above the door: Okafor Repairs, Radios and Small Appliances. Now it belonged to Nadia and her younger brother, Simon, though they agreed on almost nothing about what it should become.

2On Tuesday morning a woman set a clock radio on the counter. Its wooden case was scratched, one dial was missing, and when Simon plugged it in, it gave a single dry crackle and went silent. The woman explained that it had sat on her kitchen windowsill for as long as she could remember. She did not ask what it would cost. She asked whether it could be saved.

3Nadia was certain it could not. Parts for a radio that old would have to be hunted down one at a time, and the hours alone would cost more than a new radio with twice the features. She had made this calculation many times, and the numbers had never once come out in favor of nostalgia. She began, gently, to say so.

4Simon was already lifting the back panel. To him the radio was not a calculation but a puzzle, and the silence had told him something. A set that was truly finished, he believed, did not crackle at all. That single sound meant the power was getting through and something small, a loose wire or a tired part, was blocking the rest. He said none of this aloud. He only asked the woman whether she could leave it until Friday.

5After she left, Nadia leaned against the workbench and watched him. “You know we'll lose money on it,” she said.

6“Probably,” Simon said, without looking up.

7She did not argue further. It had always been this way between them: she kept the ledger, and he kept the shop interesting, and their father had liked to say that a business needed both, though he never said which mattered more. Nadia suspected he had been too kind to choose.

8On Thursday evening the radio came back to life in the middle of a weather report, the announcer's voice faint and then suddenly clear. Simon turned the volume up and grinned at his sister. Nadia shook her head, but she stayed to listen until the forecast ended, and that night, for the first time in months, she did not open the ledger before going home.

In paragraph 3, the statement that the numbers “had never once come out in favor of nostalgia” reflects the point of view of:

  1. Simon, who sees the radio as a puzzle to solve
  2. the customer, who wants her old radio saved
  3. Nadia, who judges a repair mainly by its costAnswer
  4. the siblings' father, who ran the shop for years

How to solve it

  1. Find the sentence and look backward for a signal: paragraph 3 begins “Nadia was certain it could not.”
  2. Every sentence after it (the parts, the hours, the calculation) explains that certainty, so they belong to the same person.
  3. Choose Nadia, and check that the other choices place the view with the wrong person or in the wrong paragraph.

Why each choice is right or wrong

  • A. Incorrect. Simon's view comes in paragraph 4: “To him the radio was not a calculation but a puzzle.” Paragraph 3 is about his sister.
  • B. Incorrect. The customer wants the radio saved, which is the opposite of a view that dismisses nostalgia, and she “did not ask what it would cost.”
  • C. Correct. The paragraph opens “Nadia was certain it could not,” and the numbers belong to “this calculation,” which “She had made” many times. The view is Nadia's.
  • D. Incorrect. The father appears only in paragraphs 1 and 7, and nothing in paragraph 3 refers to him.

Worked example Medium

Show the whole passage

The Clock Radio

This passage is from a short story about a brother and sister who run a repair shop.

1The shop had belonged to their father, and for eleven years it had carried his name above the door: Okafor Repairs, Radios and Small Appliances. Now it belonged to Nadia and her younger brother, Simon, though they agreed on almost nothing about what it should become.

2On Tuesday morning a woman set a clock radio on the counter. Its wooden case was scratched, one dial was missing, and when Simon plugged it in, it gave a single dry crackle and went silent. The woman explained that it had sat on her kitchen windowsill for as long as she could remember. She did not ask what it would cost. She asked whether it could be saved.

3Nadia was certain it could not. Parts for a radio that old would have to be hunted down one at a time, and the hours alone would cost more than a new radio with twice the features. She had made this calculation many times, and the numbers had never once come out in favor of nostalgia. She began, gently, to say so.

4Simon was already lifting the back panel. To him the radio was not a calculation but a puzzle, and the silence had told him something. A set that was truly finished, he believed, did not crackle at all. That single sound meant the power was getting through and something small, a loose wire or a tired part, was blocking the rest. He said none of this aloud. He only asked the woman whether she could leave it until Friday.

5After she left, Nadia leaned against the workbench and watched him. “You know we'll lose money on it,” she said.

6“Probably,” Simon said, without looking up.

7She did not argue further. It had always been this way between them: she kept the ledger, and he kept the shop interesting, and their father had liked to say that a business needed both, though he never said which mattered more. Nadia suspected he had been too kind to choose.

8On Thursday evening the radio came back to life in the middle of a weather report, the announcer's voice faint and then suddenly clear. Simon turned the volume up and grinned at his sister. Nadia shook her head, but she stayed to listen until the forecast ended, and that night, for the first time in months, she did not open the ledger before going home.

In paragraph 4, the idea that a radio that was “truly finished” would not crackle at all is best described as:

  1. Simon's belief, which the narrator reports but does not state as factAnswer
  2. a general fact about old radios that the narrator explains to the reader directly
  3. an argument Simon makes aloud to persuade the customer to wait
  4. Nadia's reason for thinking the repair will cost too much money

How to solve it

  1. Find the signal inside the sentence: “he believed.” The paragraph also opens “To him.”
  2. So the sentence reports what Simon thinks; the narrator does not state it as a fact about radios.
  3. Check the other choices against the text: Simon “said none of this aloud,” and Nadia's view is in paragraph 3.

Why each choice is right or wrong

  • A. Correct. The words “he believed” sit in the middle of the sentence, and the paragraph begins “To him,” so the narrator is reporting Simon's thinking, not vouching for it.
  • B. Incorrect. A general fact about old radios gives a character's idea to the narrator. The phrase “he believed” marks the idea as Simon's, not as a fact the narrator explains to the reader.
  • C. Incorrect. Simon keeps the idea to himself: “He said none of this aloud.”
  • D. Incorrect. Nadia's reasoning is in paragraph 3 and is about parts and hours; the crackle is Simon's clue that the radio can be fixed.

Trap The narrator is not the character

When a sentence says a character was certain, believed, or suspected something, the narrator is reporting a thought, not vouching for it. In the repair-shop story, Nadia “was certain” the radio could not be saved, and two days later it plays a weather report. A choice that treats her certainty as the narrator's opinion, or as the story's final word, falls into the trap.

The same goes for a first-person narrator looking back: what the younger self believed then is not always what the narrator thinks now. Match the view to the person and the moment the question names.