Point of View in Short Stories
Browse our curated collection of short stories featuring point of view with literary analysis and discussion guides.
What is point of view?
Point of view is the perspective a story is told from: who is telling it, how much that narrator knows, and whose thoughts the reader is allowed to see. It is the author’s choice, and it shapes what you know, whom you trust, and how you feel about the events. In a story told by "I," you get one person’s account; in one told by "he" or "she," the narrator can stay close to a single character or move between several.
What does point of view mean? In everyday speech it means someone’s opinion ("from my point of view…"). In literature it is narrower: it is the position of the narrator, not just the attitude of a character. A quick way to identify it is to ask four questions — Who is telling the story? Which pronouns does the narrator use? Whose thoughts can we read? Can we trust what we are told? The chart below (a point of view anchor chart you can copy) answers those questions for each type, and the cards after it show each type in a complete short story on this site.
Point of view anchor chart
The main types of point of view, with a complete story on this site for each. "Limited" and "omniscient" describe how much a third-person narrator knows.
| Type | Pronouns | What the reader can see | Example on this site |
|---|---|---|---|
| First person | I, me, my (or we) | One character’s thoughts and only what that character knows or chooses to say | The Tell-Tale Heart |
| Second person | you | The reader is addressed as a character in the action; rare in fiction | None of the stories here; Lorrie Moore’s “How to Become a Writer” is a well-known example |
| Third-person limited | he, she, they | The inside of one character’s mind; other characters are seen from outside | Young Goodman Brown |
| Third-person omniscient | he, she, they | The narrator can enter several minds, move through time and place, and step back to comment | The Bet |
| Third-person objective | he, she, they | Only actions and dialogue, like a camera; no one’s thoughts are stated | Hills Like White Elephants |
First person: the narrator is the protagonist
The narrator is a character who says "I" and tells the story from inside it. The reader sees only what that person knows, notices, or is willing to admit — which is why first person is the natural home of the unreliable narrator.
Example — The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe: The story opens by addressing the reader: "why will you say that I am mad?" Everything, including the murder, is filtered through the narrator’s insistence that he is sane, so the gap between his claim and his behavior is the story. We never see the old man’s side.
First person: a private journal
A diary or letter is first person with a built-in reason to be intimate and unedited. The narrator writes to herself, so the reader overhears what she would not say aloud.
Example — The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The narrator’s journal begins calmly — "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage." — and the reader learns more about her husband’s control, and her own decline, than she states. The point of view lets us watch her perception change entry by entry.
First person: a witness who retells another’s story
In a frame narrative, an "I" who is not the main actor introduces someone else’s tale. The narrator is a witness, so the story is one step removed and its credibility depends on who is doing the telling.
Example — Luck by Mark Twain: The narrator sits at a banquet: "The clergyman at my left was an old acquaintance of mine." The shocking account of the celebrated general comes from the clergyman, not the narrator, which gives the satire the feel of an eyewitness confession.
Third-person limited: close to one mind
The narrator says "he" or "she" but stays with one character’s perceptions. We know what that character sees and feels, and everything else is guessed from the outside, so the reader can be as uncertain as the character.
Example — Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne: We follow Brown through the forest and never learn the truth beyond what he perceives. At the end the narrator asks "Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?" and then replies "Be it so if you will," declining to settle it — limited point of view is what keeps the meeting ambiguous.
Third-person omniscient: a narrator who knows more
An omniscient narrator is not tied to one mind. It can report several characters’ thoughts, summarize the past, and move between scenes, so the reader can know things the characters do not.
Example — The Bet by Anton Chekhov: The narrator recounts the wager fifteen years earlier, reports the banker’s private thoughts ("The old banker remembered all this, and thought…"), and then reproduces the lawyer’s own voice in a letter that begins "To-morrow at twelve o’clock I regain my freedom." Seeing both men lets the reader feel the irony neither can.
Third-person objective: only what a camera would see
The objective narrator reports actions and dialogue without saying what anyone thinks or feels. The reader has to infer motive from behavior, which makes objective point of view a natural fit for subtext.
Example — Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway: Two people talk at a train station and the narrator never explains what they are really discussing or how either feels. Everything must be read from what is said and what is left unsaid, so the point of view carries the story’s meaning.
Frequently asked questions
What is point of view in a story?
Point of view is the perspective the story is told from — who narrates, how much that narrator knows, and whose thoughts we can see. It is a choice the author makes, and it controls what the reader knows and how far the reader trusts the account. The main types are first person, second person, third-person limited, third-person omniscient, and third-person objective.
What is the meaning of point of view?
In everyday speech, "point of view" means a person’s opinion or way of seeing something. In literature the meaning is more precise: it is the position of the narrator relative to the story, meaning who is telling it and how much that narrator can know. A character can have an opinion that differs from the narrator’s; that is the character’s perspective, not the story’s point of view.
What are examples of point of view in short stories?
On this site, "The Tell-Tale Heart" is first person from the protagonist, "The Yellow Wallpaper" is first person in a journal, and "Luck" is first person from a witness who retells another man’s story. "Young Goodman Brown" is third-person limited, "The Bet" is third-person omniscient, and "Hills Like White Elephants" is third-person objective. Each card above shows the type in a complete story.
How do you identify the point of view of a story?
Ask four questions. Who is telling the story? Which pronouns does the narrator use: I, you, or he/she/they? Whose thoughts can we read — one character’s, several characters’, or no one’s? And can we trust what we are told? "I" usually means first person; "he" or "she" means third person, and whether it is limited, omniscient, or objective depends on how many minds the narrator enters.
What is the difference between first-person and third-person point of view?
In first person the narrator is a character who says "I," so the story is limited to what that person knows and is willing to tell, and the narrator may be biased or unreliable. In third person the narrator stands outside the story and uses "he," "she," or "they"; it can stay with one character (limited), move between characters (omniscient), or report only actions and speech (objective).
What is the difference between third-person limited and omniscient?
Third-person limited stays inside one character’s mind and shows only what that character perceives, so the reader discovers events along with the character. Third-person omniscient can enter more than one mind, summarize events the characters do not see, and comment on the action. The test is whether the narrator ever tells you something that no single character could know.
Is there a second-person point of view in short stories?
Yes, but it is rare in fiction. Second person addresses the reader as "you," as if the reader is a character in the story; Lorrie Moore’s short story "How to Become a Writer" is a well-known example. None of the stories in this collection is told in second person, so the anchor chart lists it for completeness.
Why does point of view matter?
It decides what the reader can know and whom the reader will believe. A first-person narrator can make a reader sympathize or doubt, as in an unreliable narrator; a limited narrator can create suspense and ambiguity by withholding what the character does not know; an omniscient narrator can build irony by showing what characters cannot see. Changing the point of view changes the story.
Hills Like White Elephants
An American man and a young woman sit at a train station in Spain, drinking and waiting. Through carefully constructed dialogue full of subtext, they discuss an unspecified "operation" - implied to be an abortion. The conversation reveals a power imbalance, emotional disconnect, and an uncertain future for their relationship.
The Tell-Tale Heart
An unnamed narrator insists upon their sanity while describing the methodical killing of an old man. Driven mad by the old man's "vulture eye," the narrator commits the act with precision, dismembers the body, and hides it beneath the floorboards. When police arrive, the narrator's guilt manifests as an unbearable phantom heartbeat, leading to a confession.
The Story of an Hour
Mrs. Mallard learns of her husband's death in a railroad accident. After initial grief, alone in her room she discovers an unexpected feeling of freedom and independence. She whispers "free, free, free!" and begins to imagine a self-directed future. When her husband unexpectedly walks through the door alive, she collapses and dies - doctors say of "joy that kills."
The Bet
At a party, a wealthy banker and a young lawyer argue over whether capital punishment or life imprisonment is more humane. The banker wagers two million rubles that the lawyer cannot endure fifteen years of solitary confinement. The lawyer accepts and voluntarily imprisons himself in a garden lodge. Over fifteen years he passes through despair, wine, and finally an immense program of reading that transforms him. On the eve of his release the banker, now near ruin, resolves to murder him rather than pay - only to find a letter in which the lawyer renounces the money and everything the world values, then escapes five hours early to forfeit the bet.
The Yellow Wallpaper
A woman suffering from what her physician husband John calls a 'temporary nervous depression' is confined for a summer to an upstairs room and forbidden to work or write. Denied any outlet, she becomes fixated on the room's sickly yellow wallpaper. In secret journal entries she begins to see a woman trapped and creeping behind the pattern, and gradually identifies with her. By the end she has torn the paper from the walls to 'free' the trapped woman - and, creeping around the locked room, has slipped entirely into madness.
Young Goodman Brown
In Puritan Salem, Goodman Brown leaves his young wife, Faith, at nightfall to keep a mysterious appointment in the forest. There a devilish traveler leads him toward a witches' sabbath, where he is horrified to see the pious figures of his community - his minister, the catechism teacher, and finally Faith herself - gathered to be received into the devil's communion. Whether he dreams it or not, Brown returns to the village a changed man: he can no longer trust in anyone's goodness, and he lives out his days in gloom and suspicion.
Luck
At a banquet honoring a celebrated English military hero, Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, the narrator is told an astonishing secret by an old clergyman who was once Scoresby's instructor at military school. Out of pity, the clergyman had coached the dull young Scoresby through his exams so he would not be humiliated - never dreaming it would launch a career. Ever since, every blunder Scoresby has made in battle has, by pure accident, turned into a dazzling victory, so that a genuine fool has been mistaken by the world for a genius. His whole glittering reputation, the clergyman confides, rests on nothing but luck.