Point of View

The point of view in Age of Iron comes from the perspective of the narrator, Mrs. Curren. Because the narrative is in the form of a long letter to the narrator's daughter, it begins with a second person reference. Other second person references occur frequently throughout the text, and these remind us that the letter is addressed to a specific person, not to the general reader. Beyond these occurrences the story proceeds like any other first person narrative.

As with other stories delivered by first person narrative, we the readers cannot know anything about other characters beyond what the narrator knows. Every action and every statement we can attribute to a character has been interpreted and relayed to us by the narrator. Fortunately in this case, our narrator is a woman with a brilliant and insightful mind. She has spent a lifetime as a teacher, and...