POV What a difference

One observation I had in class this week about point of view is that it creates more than just a simple angle, but it shapes the entire way we experience and view a story. This seed has stuck with me all week, whether I was reading The Stranger, Roselily, or even watching my current TV show, The Boys. When something gets “conveniently” left out or overemphasized from a certain perspective, it doesn’t feel random, but completely reshapes how we see and think about each character. That’s really what I kept noticing, where POV isn’t just a storytelling choice, but it’s the thing that quietly shifts our opinions, our judgments, and even our sense of who’s right or wrong. That’s what stayed with me more than anything this week.

To begin, when I watched my show, The Boys, throughout the week on Amazon Prime, I saw firsthand how POV can impact my viewing experience, as we, as viewers, see the same world differently from each person. For example, for Butcher, we see his POV of viewing the world as a constant battleground and fight, as we see his flashbacks and memories that impact his decisions on why he does what he does, whereas through Homelander's POV, we see the world being a stage built just for him through his constant expectations placed on him by society. The differences of perspectives don't replace each other but rather show how each different perspective views the same world as completely different, impacting how they are portrayed as a villain or hero. 

This idea carried into my reading of The Stranger this past week as well. In reading this, I saw how perspective served as almost the complete opposite of that in The Boys, as instead of giving us multiple perspectives, Lamus traps us in the narrator's voice only. His perspective doesn't expand the world, but rather narrows it to only his views, and still shows so much about him by indirectly revealing the truth.

All in all, noticing how POV shaped each of these stories made me realize how much power it actually has within storytelling. It showed me that the way the story is simply told can be as reveling, if not more, than the story itself.






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