inclined to trust the narrator and to enter into the experience.Second,the writer has a ready-made principle of selection.No story can tell everything there is to tell.The writer must make choices.A story told in the first person is necessarily limited to what the narrator has seen,heard,or surmised. The difficulties of first-person point of view may only strike us when we try to write stories ourselves.For example,the narrator must be present at all the essential events,or the author must invent a way of supplying the information.This can lead to the contrivances we have all come across in our reading of fiction---overheard conversations,letters opened by mistake---that strain credibility.Coincidences occur in fiction as in life,but the writer who relies too heavily on coincidence to extricate the hero from the conflict risks losing the reader's faith First-person point of view presents yet another difficulty.Ordinarily,we expect that the narrator should be a good judge of character and be reasonably gifted with words. A stupid or inarticulate narrator seems a contradiction in terms.But what of the storyteller who is dishonest or is deluded by other characters in the story?Should such a storyteller be barred from the role of narrator?Not always.A gifted writer may create some of the most telling effects when the reader grasps the truth that a narrator is deceitful or fails to understand the implications of his own tale In trying to avoid some of the problems inherent in his first-person point of view, the author may elect to have a minor character tell the major character's story,like the Reverend in Mark Twain's Luck(cf.P.180). This method turns the narrator into a historian,reconstructing the events after the fact.Such stories maintain a strong illusion of reality,and perhaps some heroes are set off to advantage if seen from a certain distance. Second Person Although a second person narration(in which the narrator tells a listener what he or she has done,using the "you"personal pronoun)is possible,it is rare because in effect the second person actually requires a first-person voice.The viewpoint requires also that the listener be the character who lived through the narration.Thus a parentinclined to trust the narrator and to enter into the experience. Second, the writer has a ready-made principle of selection. No story can tell everything there is to tell. The writer must make choices. A story told in the first person is necessarily limited to what the narrator has seen, heard, or surmised. The difficulties of first-person point of view may only strike us when we try to write stories ourselves. For example, the narrator must be present at all the essential events, or the author must invent a way of supplying the information. This can lead to the contrivances we have all come across in our reading of fiction---overheard conversations, letters opened by mistake---that strain credibility. Coincidences occur in fiction as in life, but the writer who relies too heavily on coincidence to extricate the hero from the conflict risks losing the reader’s faith. First-person point of view presents yet another difficulty. Ordinarily, we expect that the narrator should be a good judge of character and be reasonably gifted with words. A stupid or inarticulate narrator seems a contradiction in terms. But what of the storyteller who is dishonest or is deluded by other characters in the story? Should such a storyteller be barred from the role of narrator? Not always. A gifted writer may create some of the most telling effects when the reader grasps the truth that a narrator is deceitful or fails to understand the implications of his own tale. In trying to avoid some of the problems inherent in his first-person point of view, the author may elect to have a minor character tell the major character’s story, like the Reverend in Mark Twain’s Luck (cf. P. 180). This method turns the narrator into a historian, reconstructing the events after the fact. Such stories maintain a strong illusion of reality, and perhaps some heroes are set off to advantage if seen from a certain distance. Second Person Although a second person narration (in which the narrator tells a listener what he or she has done, using the “you” personal pronoun) is possible, it is rare because in effect the second person actually requires a first-person voice. The viewpoint requires also that the listener be the character who lived through the narration. Thus a parent