With a first-person narrator, you see the story unfold through the eyes of one character. Think about how John reacts to other characters and the way he describes the story's events. Would a third-person omniscient narrator (a narrator who sees into the minds of all characters in a story) have presented a more compelling picture of the events in "By the Waters of Babylon"?

Choose either Passage A or Passage B and rewrite it as a 3rd Person Omniscient Narrator's Point of View.

Make sure you include all the details of the passage.
Make sure you use correct Grammar, Usage and Mechanics.
Make sure you use dialogue correctly and consider how changing the POV changes the perspective of the dialogue. (aka the dialogue itself will not change)

Then, answer these reflection questions: (answer in 1 or 2 complete sentences)

1. How did changing the Point of View affect your perspective of the character's development?

2. How did changing the Point of View affect your perspective of the theme?

Passage A:

When the raft was made, I said the sayings for the dead and painted myself for death. My heart was cold as a frog and my knees like water, but the burning in my mind would not let me have peace. As I pushed the raft from the shore, I began my death song—I had the right. It was a fine song. "I am John, son of John," I sang. "My people are the Hill People. They are the men. I go into the Dead Places but I am not slain. I take the metal from the Dead Places but I am not blasted. I travel upon the god-roads and am not afraid. E-yah! I have killed the panther, I have killed the fawn! E-yah! I have come to the great river. No man has come there before. It is forbidden to go east, but I have gone, forbidden to go on the great river, but I am there. Open your hearts, you spirits, and hear my song. Now I go to the Place of the Gods, I shall not return. My body is painted for death and my limbs weak, but my heart is big as I go to the Place of the Gods!"

Passage B:

Then I saw their fate come upon them and that was terrible past speech. It came upon them as they walked the streets of their city. I have been in the fights with the Forest People—I have seen men die. But this was not like that. When gods war with gods, they use weapons we do not know. It was fire falling out of the sky and a mist that poisoned. It was the time of the Great Burning and the Destruction. They ran about like ants in the streets of their city—poor gods, poor gods! Then the towers began to fall. A few escaped—yes, a few. The legends tell it. But, even after the city had become a Dead Place, for many years the poison was still in the ground. I saw it happen, I saw the last of them die. It was darkness over the broken city and I wept.

All this, I saw. I saw it as I have told it, though not in the body. When I woke in the morning, I was hungry, but I did not think first of my hunger for my heart was perplexed and confused. I knew the reason for the Dead Places but I did not see why it had happened. It seemed to me it should not have happened, with all the magic they had. I went through the house looking for an answer. There was so much in the house I could not understand—and yet I am a priest and the son of a priest. It was like being on one side of the great river, at night, with no light to show the way.