Point of View

Dogeaters exists in two points of view. Most of the scenes are presented in a third person, naturalistic style in which a "fourth wall" is respected. The narrative voice for these scenes comes in the form of Nestor Norales and Barbara Villabueva, two radio personalities who narrate the proceedings as though they were a soap opera, including advertizements in the midst of the action.

This creates an interesting dichotomy in which scenes are presented straight, with characters never speaking directly to the audience, and a sort of two-person chorus explicating and critiquing these scenes. With this point-of-view, Hagedorn is simultaneously hiding the artifice of theatre and acknowledging it. The events onstage are not real, but only Nestor, Barbara, Hagedorn, and the reader/audience are aware of this. This reader/audience, with the narrator as conduit, is omniscient: the characters do not interact with them until the...