Point of View

This book is a memoir, so naturally it is told from the point of view of the author. However, even within this, the point of view shifts. Sometimes he speaks from the perspective of the juvenile Carlos and sometimes he speaks as the adult looking back. Narrating from the child's perspective is effective for evoking what he actually felt, saw, and heard. It allows the reader to experience an event as he experienced it. However, when Eire wants to communicate an understanding he gained retrospectively, he must revert to speaking from an adult's perspective. Both points of view are necessary to understand fully the profound effect of the Cuban Revolution on the life of a child living there at the time. To speak of the unspeakable loss, the child's perspective allows the reader to see what it is he had. From the child's point of view...