Point of View

We are most often taken into the psyches of Set and Grey throughout the novel, though we sometimes venture into the minds of peripheral characters like Dwight Dicks or Jessie Motteldmare. Only when we inhabit the mental space of our main characters, however, do we slip into a unique first-person voice. By marking the distinction between the two central characters and the rest of the cast in this way, Momaday marks them as unique. Their quality of people set-apart and as bearers of something sacred is what draws the two together and makes their independent but ultimately converging journeys so compelling.

Setting

The book is set on the Kiowa reservation, the Navajo reservation, and San Francisco, with two brief scenes in New York City and Paris. As important as the geographic setting of the novel, however, is its positioning in the spatial world of myth...