Tom Ripley Literary Point Of View

Serving as a method of narration, literary point of view is, in fact, the “eye” and the “ear” of the readers and the audience, through which people are able to have access to the imaginary world in the novels and the films. Different points of views will lead to various angles and perspectives upon the same individuals, events or actions, and thus bring about divergent interpretations of the emotions, feelings, and comprehensions. Therefore, to analyze the literary point of view in the narrations of both novels and films is essential for people to approach the core values and the true attitudes below the surface of the stories, in that it determines the audience’s connection with the world inside the stories to a huge extent. The third-person …show more content…
Highsmith depicts the behaviors of Tom in detail as well as reveals Tom’s inner thoughts explicitly, portraying the figure of Tom Ripley as a tactful while talented liar, who associates with the grey areas of the society and struggles to live a higher-level life, vain and calculating. For example, just after Tom accepts Mr. Greenleaf’s offer to go to Italy, he plans to cheat a last victim from his lists of prospects, Mr de Sevilla. “Shouldn’t he try just one more in these last ten days before he sailed? ...he needed a good scare by telephone to put the fear of God into him” (Highsmith 180). The thought displayed here make it obvious that Tom is puffed up for his talent of deceit. His eventually losing control of his endless desire is foreshadowed at the very beginning of the whole story. Moreover, the elaborate delineation of Tom’s calm head after he kills Freddie, his meticulous plan of hiding his true identity, and his crazy fondness for taking risks in the novel aggregates and establishes the sense of twisted mentality in readers’ hearts. It is a feeling of terror. The obsession with the immorality in Tom’s mind seizes the readers by their throats, causing shivers down their spines. Meanwhile, the absence of first-person perspective blurs some specific features of Tom, including his sexual preference and the mention of loneliness, which creates the distance from the character and vagueness in …show more content…
That the beginning and ending scenes of the film employ first-person outside point of view – in which Tom sits in a trance after he conducts his third murder of Peter and he starts to recount the whole story with his soulless voice – generates the link between the audience and Tom. At the same time, the limited third person point of view in the film, which removes the illustration of Tom’s mindset, leaves the audience more space to fill up the blank themselves. Due to the fact that the audience are placed subjectively with Tom at the first glance while not directly get what he truly thinks, they tend to consider him in a more positive way. In addition, the movie sketches Tom as an individual much more sensitive and fragile than the one in the novel – who reacts rather than taking initiatives – by several shots of his expressions. The scene when he has killed Dickie, lies down and curls himself in the boat with Dickie, successfully conveys a feeling of helpless and hopeless. Hence, in the film, the audience are more likely to involuntarily empathize with Tom, feel difficult to blame him, and even get nervous and worried when the police are questioning Tom and when Tom barely escapes. However, the insufficiency of first-person point of view makes the character of Tom more sophisticated than ever before, in