“Diverse perspectives within a text can be both enriching and confusing”. To what degree do you find this to be true in at least two of the works you have studied?

Diverse perspectives in the form of unique insights into characters and events can provide a reader with intricate information that can be used to better comprehend an ambiguous situation or add ambiguity to a seemingly simplified one. While multifaceted stories can be seen as insightful by some readers, others may find it hampering their understanding hence it is important to consider the point of view adopted by a narrator depending on the complexity of the information the author is trying to convey. Written in a first person perspective, “The Outsider” by Albert Camus, explores the irrationality of life, inevitability of death and monotony of routine in a manner that adopts a single person’s perspective to allow the reader to recognise the poignantly complex emotions one goes through when dealing with loss. Conversely, “The Chronicle of a Death Foretold” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, adopts a first person omniscient perspective bringing out multiple accounts of a single event to highlight the same ideas of inevitable death, absurdism in life and omnipresence of routine but make them seem less daunting.
Written post World War 1, published in 1942, Camus’ “The Outsider” comes from an extremely personal context hence highlights the importance of single records in the narration of a story. Having faced several hardships like dropping out of school after the death of his father, living in a colonialized land in a chaotic post-war period, Camus successfully reflects personal internal conflict in the Outsider. Narrating the entire novel from anti-hero Meursault’s perspective Camus is able to mirror his own alienation via the protagonists detachment from society. Camus explores the acceptance of death and irrationality of love as unique opinions of Meursault that stem from his own feelings of not belonging which are sentiments felt by Camus too, which would not have been possible to convey to the reader had this novel included diverse perspectives. 
            However, coming from a collectivist culture part of Lain American society, Marquez’s context of a feeling of community harmony would be impossible to convey if diverse perspectives hadn’t been taken into account. Marquez’s Chronicle set in the coastal village of sucre in the 1950’s was inspired by a true story hence the journalistic aspects of relaying facts and multiple accounts added to the authenticity and hence better understanding of his novella. Marquez comes from a culture where telling stories again and again was a tradition. This often meant that information travelled all over small towns, much like sucre, as people told their own versions of events – an aspect vital to this story of the ambiguity related to the protagonists Santiago Nassar’s death about everything but the death itself. Therefore, the sense of community and importance of ambiguity in something as final as death which require diverse perspectives in order to be understood contextually would not be possible had Marquez not drawn from his Latin American context and adapted an omniscient narrator. 
       In conclusion, via the contrasting contexts where Camus came from a cumulation of personal events whereas Marquez and “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” are able to evidence both sides of the argument that diverse perspectives within a text can be enriching or confusing.