My second look at POV is going to be first person. First person POV uses “I” pronouns, of course, and helps the reader access the character’s thoughts. When writing in first there are many things to consider on the path to a believable narrative. It allows you to write a stream of consciousness, which (with careful maneuvering) allows you to convey any point, as long as it is expressed as an idea. This should be done in small doses but has the potential to charge your sentences. This is the style that a lot of writers seem to feel most comfortable writing in, due (I believe) in part, to the fact that life is a first person narrative. . Whereas you could avoid bias with 3rd close you aren’t afforded that luxury with first person; this ties well into creating your character’s voice and the narrative voice however, though maintaining that voice can be complex, depending on how different your character is. Another thing to be weary of is to take internal monologue too far and turn it into useless rambling. Keep it memorable, keep it important, and use it when you couldn't more easily show you idea through body language or actions.

"The Handmaid's Tale" Margaret Atwood is a fine example of the power of first person POV. The story begins in the middle of the story, slightly before the beginning of the main time space the story occupies. The narrator (Offred) is being trained to fill the societal role of “Handmaid” (a woman who has been designated to bear children in the new world. She sleeps among countless other women like herself, being told how to act and being dehumanized to nothing more than a vessel. With first person we are given no description of what the character looks like, her identity is stripped away to us as it actually is in the story. Along with that we have the same understanding of the world, which as it turns out is none. This allows for surprise and suspense: we are testing the bounds of society alongside Offred. This second point works well into the setting and theme of the piece: a dystopian society. In a dystopian piece of fiction it serves the narrative to have ambiguity. Leave the reader as disoriented as the character, it allows the reader to bond deeper with the narrative. Atwood’s choice of first person POV shows us how to use POV to your advantage, and how important it is to choose the right perspective.

This last idea is tackled by an author I’m only slightly fond of in the book "Fight Club." Chuck Palahniuk writes a story from the perspective of a character so bored with the monotony of his life until Tyler Durden enters it. The narrator begins living for the first time, going against the societal norms that he had suckled so fiercely at the beginning to the story, only to find that his mentor is none other than himself. Because of the nature of the story, it can only be told in first person; in any other perspective we would see the narrator talking to no one, or we would see him making exclamations and statements more aligned with Tyler. With first person POV the narrator’s rich voice and blunt observations of life turn our eye away from the truth. His bias and the conflicts that he has with Tyler make both characters so lively, so real, that when the twist comes we are thrown for a loop as is the narrator. We ride out the rest of the story with him in that stunned disbelief and when the end comes we are filled with dread along with the narrator. The use of POV makes us feel as though our minds have also been “defiled” with misinformation, by entering the mind of the narrator we feel used as well, bewildered that we didn’t grasp onto the threads of reality. We race words to the end to find the truth.

Both of these stories are prime examples of proper application of first person POV in a story. More so, they also show how POV can be something so much more than how the story is told. How POV can, in fact, be an essentially integral part of the structure.