First person narration occurs when the author of a novel apparently becomes one of the characters and uses the pronoun "I". All the events and other people are seen from this perspective and are limited to that viewpoint: the narrator cannot look into the future or to scenes where he or she is not present (unless by report.) There is also a problem with giving personal appearance unless the narrator looks in a mirror or someone else provides a portrait. The main strength of the method is when an unreliable narrator is used, such as a child, to show the confusion, hypocrisy or corruption in adult society by describing it in all innocence, leaving the reader to fill in the full picture.
Third person narration is similar except that the pronouns "he", "she" and "they" are used for the point of view and this can sometimes be combined with omniscient narration (see below.)
