impersonal observer to whom the souls of all
are open, numerous shifts of viewpoint will be necessary. They are
implied in the mode of narration itself. The world cannot be looked at
through the eyes and souls of a succession of characters without a
succession of shifts. All this merely amounts to saying that certain
modes of narration which cannot be employed in writing the strict short
story may be freely employed in writing the novel. In the case of the
novel, or of the story that is somewhat brief without being a strict
short story, the task is not so much never to shift the viewpoint,
rather always to indicate the shift with clearness. Just as the reader's
interest should be the first consideration in choosing matter and
devising a plot, clarity to the reader must be considered when any shift
in the narrative point of view becomes necessary. Let the shift be
avowed and obvious; any uncertainty can lead only to confusion.

It follows that writers who have chosen to tell their stories from the
viewpoints of several characters will prove the most profitable for
study as to how to shift viewpoint without confusing a reader. Chiefly,
of course, they are novelists, Eliot, Balzac, Hardy, Scott, and an
infinity of lesser lights. Galsworthy, for instance, in each of his
chapters succeeds in producing a singular unity of effect, with
corresponding clarity for the reader, chiefly by making his shifts of
viewpoint coincide with shifts of scene and person.[G]

Inextricably bound up with the mode of narration and the general
narrative viewpoint of the story is the matter of the author's own
attitude toward the story. The distinction between these matters is
fine, but real. It is possible that a given story may be told,
adequately so far as the bare story is concerned, in any one of several
different ways. Narration in the first person by a major or a minor
character may be employed, or the author may write in the third person,
assuming knowledge of all events and of the inner workings of one, some,
or all of the characters. But there is another consideration. The whole
conception may depend for its appeal upon what I am forced to call very
roughly sympathy for a character or group of characters, and a mode of
narration must be employed which will enable the author to express his
sympathy that he may evoke the reader's.

I do not wish to shift the discussion into the field of ethics, but the
point is that any chain of events m