What is the narrator point of view in the novel, Human Acts?

This novel is noteworthy in that each chapter is told from a different perspective and at a different point in time. The first chapter starts off with an omniscient narrator speaking to “you” and describing your experiences as a young boy amidst the violent uprisings in Gwangju. The reader takes on the persona of Dong-ho, a middle-school-aged boy who witnesses the death of his friend. Beginning the novel with this second person perspective is an immediate address that hurls the reader directly into the violent events.

While the first chapter illustrates Dong-ho’s musings about souls and bodies, the second chapter is told from the point of view of his deceased friend, Jeong-dae’s soul. Jeong-dae reflects on his own death, noting how strange it was “to see [his] own eyes shuttered in that blood-leached face” (33). He describes his own interactions with other souls, and also highlights the moment of Dong-ho’s tragic death.

The following chapters shift perspectives. Chapter 3 takes on third-person omniscient narrator, focusing on the trauma of editor Kim Eun-sook five years after the death of Dong-ho. Chapter 4 returns to the second person point of view. This time, “you,” the reader is a factory girl, Seon-ju recalling the events of Dong-ho’s assassination over two decades later, in 2002. Chapter 5 shifts to the first person perspective. In this section, Dong-ho’s mother, speaking in 2010, addresses her son and expresses her severe grief. Finally, the epilogue is told from the perspective of the writer, Han Kang, herself in 2013.