there is no view menu on disk utility. how do i go about it?

That shows you have booted to internet recovery which is done by restarting while pressing the Command + Option + R keys.

To boot to your Recovery HD restart your mac while pressing and holding down the Command + R keys.

As your profile says you are on macOS 10.12 that is Sierra.

Sierra and older Mac OS X's do not have the View item in the menubar

for Disk Utility, they showed all Disks/ Volumes by default.

You cannot reformat or change the partition scheme without booting to your Recovery HD.

Restart your mac while pressing and holding the Command and R keys.

Reformatting or changing the partition map will erase your mac so will need to make a full back up before you go any further.

Do you have a Screen Sot?

I'm thinking possibly Sierra was normal & didn't need the View Menu, just highlight the top left entry that is the whole drive, or maybe CMD + 2 keys to toggle View All.

If you need to change the the partition scheme of your mac you do it by reformatting

which will erase all the data on the disk therefore you will have to do a clean install.