Question

Difficulty: HardIdentification of Narrative Point of View and Style

Read the following unseen prose extract:

"The dust on the highway settled slowly as the lorry rattled away into the distance. Mama Ngozi adjusted her headscarf, her eyes fixed on the horizon where the sun was beginning to dip. She thought of her daughter in the city, hoping the girl had found shelter before nightfall, completely unaware that at that very moment, Nneka was stepping off a train hundreds of miles away."

Statement: The narrative point of view in the extract above is third-person omniscient because the narrator reveals simultaneous events and internal states outside the awareness of the character present.

Answer: Answer

Answer

The statement is True. The passage utilizes a third-person omniscient narrative point of view.
The correct evaluation is True because the narrator demonstrates unrestricted knowledge by reporting both Mama Ngozi's inner thoughts and Nneka's simultaneous actions in another location.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the pronouns used in the passage.
The text uses third-person pronouns ('she', 'her'), establishing a third-person narrative frame.
Identifying pronoun usage distinguishes first-person from third-person narration.
2
Determine the scope of the narrator's knowledge.
The narrator accesses Mama Ngozi's internal feelings and simultaneously describes Nneka's actions in a distant city beyond Mama Ngozi's knowledge.
Third-person limited restricts perspective to one character's observations, whereas third-person omniscient encompasses multiple locations and unshared knowledge.
3
Evaluate the statement's accuracy against the narrative technique.
The statement correctly classifies the point of view as third-person omniscient based on the narrator's unrestricted awareness.
Matching the stylistic features of the excerpt to narrative definitions confirms the statement is true.

Key Concept

Third-Person Omniscient Narrative Point of View
Rate this question