What is the narrator point of view in the memoir, The Choice?

The narrative unfolds from the first-person perspective of the book’s author, Dr. Edith Eva Eger. There are two key components to that perspective. The first has to do with the fact that she is a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, established and operated by the Nazis in World War II. This experience, as Dr. Eger considers it throughout the narrative, is portrayed as profoundly traumatizing and, at the same time, profoundly enlightening, in that as she herself says, she learned a great deal about herself, about humanity, and about the value and importance of personal choice as a result of her experiences there.

The second key component to Dr. Eger’s perspective, and therefore of the book’s perspective, has to do with the fact that some years after her release from Auschwitz and her immigration to the United States, she became a respected and renowned psychologist and therapist. Throughout the book, she references her therapeutic experiences as illustrations of her various claims about trauma and recovery. Those claims are also shaped and defined by her personal experiences before, during, and after her imprisonment in Auschwitz. In other words, the book’s perspectives are essentially defined by Dr. Eger’s discovery of value in drawing on personal experience in order to reach professional goals – to use herself and her experiences with trauma and recovery as a resource and insight into the trauma of others, and into possible paths to recovery for them.