Objective and Subjective Perspective

The following extract highlights the rapid changes in perspective from internal subjective to external objective. Almost the whole passage describes  Hull’s escape from Santa Barbara. There is nothing within the text suggesting that this escape is imaginary, until suddenly “with a shock” Hull comes to and all of the preceeding action is shown to have taken place only in Hull’s imagination. There is no explanation or commentary on this change in perspective in the story.

How simple everything was. Even now he could leave. Nobody had recognised him. Not a soul knew as yet that Hull from Sebastian was here. If they found out afterwards they might think it was a shameful thing for him to have done. Maybe it really was shameful. But the steamer that had brought him here would take him back in the morning. Every day a dozen ships left Margaret’s Isle for any number of ports. All right, it was shameful. Once on the other side, however, the sun would melt away the shame. How simple everything was. He started to move, threw down a coin, ran out and banged the door shut. He ran down the hill and across the landing stage, crouched in the cabin and waited desperately for the ship’s bell to ring.

Finally they had weighed anchor and were out at sea. He went on deck. There lay Santa Barbara. With the same incredible speed that it had grown bigger yesterday it now got smaller and smaller….

With a shock, Hull came to.

Rapid Cuts in place, time and perspective

Hull could not take his mind off the melon. That cut piece looked so luscious and dripping that his mouth began to water; grease and mosquitoes notwithstanding. Once in a while a door opened and he could hear thin, small sounds coming from a wooden instrument, the kind of damned black melody which no white man could ever produce.

Silence. At steady intervals, the beam from the lighthouse drew its circles, passing across the dark wall, the faces in the shadow. In its embrace the pub dreamed it was swimming, far out in the darkness, like other boats in trouble out at sea. The seamen stared straight ahead. Maybe they were thinking, maybe of nothing, maybe of something special.

Look at the way everything changes from between these two paragraphs. Place, time, temperature, light becomes darkness, the sound, that “black melody” becomes the freezing silence of the white fishermen of Santa Barbara.

But there is no signal to explain why everything is suddenly different.

Modernist use of shifting perspective

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In the extract below the perspective shifts several times. Initially it seems to rest with Hull who suggests, or even hopes, that something might happen to stop him reaching Santa Barbara. Then Andreas sees Hull, but it’s difficult to tell whether this is Hull watching himself be seen, Andreas seeing Hull, or an external narrator describing both characters from a different point of view altogether.

Then the perspective seems to switch to Desac, but “hate gleamed in his eyes” so again  someone is seeing his eyes but who?

Something might still happen. The steamer could turn around, or the coast could again retreat. But then the steamer let out a cry, and with a jerk the coast came nearer. Now it was quiet again, a grey and sleepy trip. The ship’s bell sounded. Two of the town’s people cowered in the rain on the landing-stage. The rope was throw. The girl was again bent over the rail.

“Hey, Marie, still as skinny as ever, too!”

“You’re one to talk!”

One of the men laughed and the other, hardly more than a youth, turned his head and observed the girl with narrowed eyes. He started. He had noticed Hull. For an instant, looking at the stranger, his sun-tanned and composed face took on an expression of curiosity and hope, tinged with haughtiness.

With his sleeve the landlord wiped off the table. Hate gleamed in his eyes as he placed glass and bottle before the stranger. Here was a man who could order expensive brandy in a year when his compatriots had not caught enough fish to bake the bread to last till the next catch. Hull filled his glass and, as was the custom in this part of the country, offered it to the man opposite him. Kedennek, on of the crew of the Veronika, barely touched the rim, his lips forming a thin line op pride. Then he put it down, wordlessly.