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Point of view — ACT practice questions

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Practice 28 Point of view questions in the app

What this topic is

Point of view in fiction means who tells the story and how much the teller knows.

A first-person narrator uses I and can report only personal thoughts and what was seen, while a third-person narrator may stay with one character or know everyone's mind. ACT questions ask who the narrator is and what effect that choice has, for instance letting readers notice a misunderstanding the narrator does not.

Telling apart a narrator who is a child at the time from an adult recalling childhood years later is a frequent decision point. Clues come from verb tense and from reflective comments that only hindsight could supply.

Sample questions

Pick an answer to see whether it is right — nothing is saved, and nothing needs an account.

LITERARY NARRATIVE: This passage is adapted from the short story “The Pear Tree’s Witnesses.”

When I was sixteen, my aunt Rosa asked me

to help prove that the pear tree behind

the old laundry had belonged to our

family. The laundry was being converted

into apartments, and the builder had

promised to move any tree with documented

neighborhood significance. Rosa remembered

our grandfather carrying pears home in his

cap. From that memory she had built a firm

conclusion: he must have planted the tree

after returning from military service in

1947.

We met urban forester Dr. Mina Choi beside

the tree on a cold March morning. Rosa

brought a folder of family photographs.

Dr. Choi brought an increment borer, a

tool shaped like a long silver straw. I

brought a notebook and, though I did not

admit it, the expectation that one of them

would win.

Families often arrange the past into

parcels. This person planted that tree;

this recipe came from that kitchen. A

claim becomes a fence, and memory makes

the fence look older than it is. I

understand now why Rosa wanted a single

planter. Ownership seemed to protect the

story from being washed into the general

history of the block. At sixteen, however,

I merely thought she was being stubborn.

Dr. Choi twisted the borer through the

trunk and withdrew a thread of wood no

thicker than a shoelace. She slid it into

a grooved wooden tray so it would not curl

and disturb the order of the rings. Under

a hand lens, alternating bands recorded

seasons of quick and slow growth. Some

narrow bands matched known drought years.

After accounting for the uncollected

center of the trunk, Dr. Choi estimated

that the tree had begun growing around

1959, give or take three years.

Rosa tapped her photograph folder against

her knee. “Then the tree is wrong,” she

said, as if it had failed an examination.

Her earliest clear picture showed our

grandfather beside a pear sapling, but no

building appeared in the background. Dr.

Choi explained that the ring count could

estimate age, not tell us where the

photograph was taken, who held the shovel,

or why.

We spent the afternoon knocking on doors.

Most neighbors remembered eating the pears

but not the planting. Mr. Lau, who had

lived across the alley since childhood,

gave us a different kind of evidence. He

recalled a nursery truck losing several

young trees when its rear gate opened on

Calder Avenue. Rather than let the

bare-root saplings dry out, laundry

workers and nearby residents planted them

wherever they found space. Mr. Lau could

not supply the year, but he remembered

carrying water in a dented blue kettle and

being scolded for spilling half of it.

Rosa distrusted the story until Mr. Lau

produced a neighborhood-club photograph.

It showed six people along the laundry

wall, each beside a thin trunk. Our

grandfather stood at one end with a

shovel; Mr. Lau’s mother stood at the

other. On the back, someone had written,

“Trees from the Calder spill, spring

1960.” The core had given us an

approximate beginning. The photograph and

recollection supplied an event,

participants, and a reason. Neither method

alone had produced the whole account.

By late afternoon we returned to the pear

tree. Rosa placed her palm on its bark.

“He still planted it,” she said, but her

he no longer excluded everyone else. We

documented the core estimate, scanned the

photograph, and recorded Mr. Lau telling

the kettle story twice. The second time,

the kettle was green. Dr. Choi noted both

colors in the transcript rather than

choosing one; the inconsistency cautioned

us about detail without erasing the larger

memory, which the dated photograph

supported.

The builder eventually moved the tree only

thirty feet, into the apartment courtyard.

At the small dedication, Rosa read the

names written beneath the photograph. She

did not call it our family’s tree. She

called it “the laundry pear, planted by

whoever was nearby.” That phrase sounded

100

vague to me then. Years later, it sounds

exact. The tree’s history had not lost its

roots; it had grown more of them, braided

beneath the property lines we had mistaken

for the boundaries of the story.

Question 1Easier

The passage is narrated from the point of view of:

a first-person participant who reflects as an adult on an investigation from adolescence.✓ Correcta first-person observer who records events as they happen without later commentary.✗ Not this onea third-person narrator who reveals the private thoughts of Rosa and Dr. Choi.✗ Not this onea third-person narrator who follows Mr. Lau’s memories of the neighborhood.✗ Not this one

Show answer

Answer: A — a first-person participant who reflects as an adult on an investigation from adolescence.

The narrator uses “I,” participates in the search at sixteen, and explicitly contrasts what seemed true then with what is understood “years later.”

Question 2Easier

One effect of the passage’s point of view is that readers:

know exactly which details Mr. Lau privately doubts before he speaks.✗ Not this oneobserve the narrator’s shift from expecting one method to win toward valuing complementary evidence.✓ Correctreceive Dr. Choi’s unspoken opinion that Rosa is being unreasonable.✗ Not this onelearn Rosa’s private reaction to the dedication more fully than the narrator’s.✗ Not this one

Show answer

Answer: B — observe the narrator’s shift from expecting one method to win toward valuing complementary evidence.

Because the narrator reports personal expectations and later reflections, readers can track the change from imagining a contest between methods to recognizing that each answers different questions.

Every question is picked for where you are right now, wrong answers come back until they stick, and it all works offline.

Practice 28 Point of view questions in the app

Point of view — ACT practice questions

What this topic is

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