Point of View in Los de Abajo

THE critical attention that has been given to point of view in Los de abajo (1915) is minimal in comparison to the proliferation of studies concerning characterization, theme and structure.' However, a careful reading of Los de abajo will reveal the importance of narrative viewpoint in the novel. Point of view is the vantage point from which the story is seen and told. According to Mier Sternberg, point of view is "the most comprehensive principle motivating the selection, combination and distribution of elements in the narrative text."2 For Norman Friedman, the problem of point of view has always been one of subjectivity, that is, the interference of an authorial narrator, versus objectivity, or the disappearance of the author.3 Friedman provides the technical framework to show the distinction between the two poles, one of subjective "telling" and the other of objective "showing." He devises a specific and identifiable set of narrative modes through which an author progressively removes himself from the story. For Wayne C. Booth this problem is not clearly defined; point of view is not just a technique for subjectivizing and objectivizing but a narrative element which is concerned with the manipulative effects of the author on the reader, creating different types of narrative distance between the two. Booth says that authors affect our perceptions by using reliable or unreliable narrators: "For practical criticism probably the most important of these kinds of distance is that between the fallible or unreliable narrator and the implied author who carries the reader with him in judging the narrator."4 In order to provide some background to the critical aspects under consideration in this article, it is necessary to point out that the concept of narrative viewpoint encompasses two dimensions, one that exists in the real world and another that exists in the imaginative world of the art-work. Cleanth Brooks and R. P. Warren state that one dimension-"point of view"-carries the basic attitude or idea of the author and the other-"focus of narration"' --describes the method of narration.5 Robert Weimann has taken the problem of definition and terminology one step further by suggesting the existence of a fusion of the two types of point of view, the historical and the structural, within a work of literature