The Point of view in Khushwant Singh’s “Posthumous’’

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the analysis of „Point of view‟ in Khushwant Singh‟s Short story “Posthumous”. It
makes an attempt to investigate how Khushwant Singh achieves his spatio-temporal, ideological and psychological
perspectives through his language. He continuously interferes with the comprehension of the readers by guiding them in
terms of locating the places and time through his spatio-temporal perspective. He also influences the feelings of the readers
by communicating his ideas through his psychological perspective. He also presents the mindset of his characters by
describing the commonly accepted social practices in the society through his ideological perspective. Point of view on
spatio-temporal, ideological and psychological planes helps the narrator achieve his purpose effectively. Point of view is a
much discussed and rigorously explored area in fiction studies, whether in the stylistics framework or any other framework
of literary criticism and theory. Point of view basically refers to the way a story is told, the mode of its narration. Point of
view concerns, produces, results in, perspectives on, evaluations of, events and characters. It is about influencing readers to
form certain opinions, or not to form certain opinions.