He smiled triumphantly

Is the smile triumphant in his eyes, or, as I tend to think, in the observer's?


(btw, great word, triumphantly, isn't it?)

Yes, I think that's always one reason for going carefully with adjectives: who says it's triumphant, and are they right?

Here, it actually depends on the context, doesn't it, and the psychic distance: how closely the narrator's point-of-view is identified with the character's, or another character's or is neutral:

'I don't believe you,' said Harry. Joe took the wallet out of his pocket. He smiled triumphantly. 'Have a look inside.'

I'd suggest we would take as being a fairly neutral description of an expression which just about anyone would call 'triumphant'.

When Joe got back, Harry obviously didn't believe he could have done anything so brave. Joe smiled triumphantly at him. He took the wallet out of his pocket.

suggests that Joe is deliberately making his face have what Joe would consider a triumphant expression. Whereas

'I don't believe you,' said Harry. How on earth could Joe, the gang wuss, possibly have done anything so scary? Joe smiled triumphantly, as if he wanted to rub it in that it was Harry who couldn't have done it.

is different again, from inside Harry's head.

It's whoever's the pov character's pov, because they are interpreting what type of smile it is for the reader.

Hmm, so it depends. The POV character in this case is someone else, not the smiler.

It seems there should be a difference between

he smiled triumphantly

and

he smiled in triumph

this second seems to imply that it's the smiler's POV - it is stating that the triumph is an actual fact, not an interpretation, and is giving rise to the smile.

As a reader I don't think I'd notice a difference. I'd be in the shoes of the pov character so either way it's still that character's interpretation of what sort of smile it was.

I agree with Naomi on this. ISTM it could mean either just as well. Whoever the narrator is has recognised the smile as triumphant, either because it looks it and the context suggests it, or because the narrator feels triumphant as he smiles.

IMO....

Deb

Like you, Leila, I tend to think of a phrase like that as being from the observer's point of view. Who the observer is, though, depends on how the rest of that particular passage is written. Emma has suggested three different ways in which the context can imply a different observer of the 'triumphantly' qualifier.

Personally, though, I think only a writer would worry about the fine nuances of who thinks it's triumphant. Most (non-writing) readers will only care whether it gives them a clear picture in their heads about what's going on, and what they are being told about the characters. (In other words, they will think of themselves as the observer - it is they who are being told the story.)

Alex

Alex, I'd agree that many/most readers wouldn't be conscious of the technicalities of PoV. But I do think that many more would be submliminally affected by the writer's decisions about it. The reader's idea of Joe and Harry's characters is much affected by who we're know is thinking 'triumphantly', whether we/they think the triumph is natural or assumed, and so on. So it's one of those things which make an important difference to the effect of the story on the reader but at a level which most readers aren't aware of (like, say, the choice of past and present tense, or hundreds of other things)

James Woods, in How Fiction Works, suggests that in classical narrative fiction, with an omniscient/knowledgeable narrator and therefore moving PoV, it's exactly the ambiguity inherent in something like that 'triumphantly', which is part of the power of writing things in that way: that it's a strength, not a weakness, and it's worth learning to exploit that ambiguity, not eliminate it.

John Gardner, too, feels that it's in the end the best way to write (though he acknowledges the virtues of other PoV/narrator structures) avoiding what he call (something like) the claustrophobia and mean-mindedness of a third-person narrative limited to a single viewpoint.

Emma

that it's a strength, not a weakness, and it's worth learning to exploit that ambiguity, not eliminate it.

I agree completely with that. Terry Pratchett uses that kind of POV to great effect, which is what makes his writing so compelling and difficult to put down (from my POV, at least). I also agree that the value of subjective terms like 'triumphantly' is that they can shed light on aspects of characters' personality which might otherwise be difficult to convey, if used subtly and in the right way.

But I also think that there is a danger of being too over-analytical about these techniques. I find that if I can picture the scene in my head, with a clear understanding of what each character's feelings and motivations are at that point, the wording, including POV, mostly sorts itself out.

Alex