An interesting study in point of view: Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Reflections on the contrasts of third-person and first-person viewpoints

my cat considering viewpoints of the creek

When I read Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy last fall, I was struck by the interesting contrast in point of view that Atwood uses in book two, Year of the Flood (which was my favorite of the three books).

Guess the point of view

The book alternates between the stories of Toby and Ren, two women in separate storylines. But one of their stories is told in third person (like “she thought it was interesting”), and the other’s story is told in first person (like “I thought it was interesting”). See if you can guess which is which, based on my description of the characters and how their stories come across:

1. Toby is tough, self-sufficient, and feels like an outsider as she makes her way through her challenges. We (the readers) like and trust her. We see the things she’s thinking, worrying about, and working to prevent; we understand and respect her choices.

2. Ren, by contrast, has a more passive and slightly clingy personality. She comes across as weak and shallow as she mostly waits to be rescued, even in the flashback parts of her story in which she’s not literally waiting to be rescued. I rarely felt a sense of connection with her feelings and struggles.

Which would you guess was written in first person (“I”), and which in third person (“she”)?

Really, take a minute to make a guess.

Answer

Ok. Did you guess that Ren was written in third person (“she”) and Toby was written in first person (“I”)? That would be my guess.

But it would be wrong.

Toby’s sections were all in third person (“she”), and Ren’s were in first person (“I”)!

This blew my mind. I’ve always tended to think of first person as the point of view that can get the reader in closest touch with the character’s mind. Certainly, I’d read plenty of novels that showed how well that can be done in third person, too; but at least when it came to my own fiction writing, first person seemed much better for accessing characters’ minds. But then Margaret Atwood came along and just smashed my assumptions about this to bits.

More about Ren’s sections vs. Toby’s sections

Ren’s narratives were so basic (like “this happened, and then this happened”), detached, and limply optimistic that several times I suspected that she was an unreliable narrator. But the story never developed in any way to substantially support that, so I was left feeling confused and disappointed in her character and storyline.

By contrast, Toby’s narrative felt substantial and standalone-worthy, and it went more like this: “Toby felt alarmed. She went and got her rifle.” We understood her experience and felt it with her.

I still don’t know why Atwood chose to write Ren’s parts that way (I haven’t gone searching for discussions of the book, so maybe there’s some piece I’m missing—if you know, please enlighten me), but I was quite glad for this stark contrast, because it helped me see some things I want to work on in my own writing.

Some writing lessons I take from this

My takeaway was not that first person was bad/ineffective and third person was good/effective, but rather that effective viewpoint writing depends on the kind of content being portrayed. Whether I’m using first or third person, I want to write character viewpoints like Toby’s, not Ren’s, in the following ways:

1. Get more realistically inside my characters’ points of view to show what they are worrying about, feeling, thinking, and planning as they move through their actions.

2. Show more of the concrete details of my characters’ lives as they would realistically pass through their minds (though only to a degree that enhances the story rather than distracts from it, of course). We see Toby work with her plants and supplies in great detail, and I liked every bit of that. It helped me feel connected to her and her world.

3. Show the ways in which my characters feel like outsiders. I think those are the ways in which they’ll become the most relatable as characters, ironically.

4. Show them as actively trying to protect something—like Toby and unlike Ren, who was mostly just waiting for other people to save her.

I’m trying to incorporate these principles into my current work-in-progress, which I’m writing in first person because that’s what I started in (before I read this book).

In Your Viewpoint

• Do you have a preference between first and third person in your reading or your writing?

• What books stand out to you as excellent examples of character viewpoint writing, in first person and in third person?

• Have you read the MaddAddam trilogy? If so, which book did you like best?

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