Odysseus Home Third Person Analysis

Third person and first person feed the reader different information. When we think in third person, we do not get the same internal emotions and troubles as we do when a story is told in first person. Third person is thought to be more impersonal, talking about the physical actions rather than emotional feelings of the character. When told in first person, we are able to get inside of the characters head and are able to relate to the character on a personal and internal level. Point of view can completely change the perspective of the novel or book and will affect the way the reader will perceive the writing.

→ An example of such is the novel Home. Frank Money is a more modern form of Odysseus. A Korean War veteran, Frank is a black man suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The reader follows the aftermath of the haunting nightmares of the Korean War and his troubles with the murder of a young girl, who we know as the Yum Yum Girl. Through the narration of the novel, he lies and fails to admit that he was the one to kill her, not his …show more content…
In the first person chapters, we usually get a look into his thoughts on his childhood, his experiences with the Korean War, and get a birdseye-view of his consciousness. These chapters are treated as diary entries. In the “diary” chapters, Frank struggles with his PTSD and argues with the narrator throughout the novel about him may or may not being the one to kill the Yum Yum Girl. He eventually can't take it anymore and says, “I have to say something to you right now. I have to tell you the whole truth. I lied to you and I lied to me. . . / My mourning was so thick it completely covered my shame” (Morrison 133). Going back and forth through first and third person narrations, we see a very psychological transformation in himself that helps him take one step further to being able to heal himself in the following