Point of View

A Private Experience is written from the third person point of view. This third person perspective is limited to Chika's character. Throughout the story, the narrator moves increasingly close to Chika's consciousness, absorbing and adopting her thoughts, opinions, and manner of observing and processing. The author establishes the exact parameters of this narrative stance on the story's second page. After Chika tells the woman, "I was buying oranges and I dropped the oranges and my handbag," the narrator shifts into Chika's private thoughts (2). "She does not add," the narrator informs the reader, "that the handbag was a Burberry, an original one that her mother had bought on a recent trip to London" (2). In this moment, the reader learns the rules of the point of view: that there are some details Chika will only reveal in her thoughts, and will not express to the woman. As...