Point of View

Hugh Howey tells his novel “Dust” in the third-person limited-omniscient narrative mode from the point of view of an unknown and unnamed narrator. This is done for at least two reasons. First, the third-person aspect of the narrative allows Howey to tell a story that involves numerous characters, and takes place between three very different silos -1, 17, and 18 – and culminating in the world above. The third-person narrator therein acts as a common, unifying thread between all of the stories, guiding the reader between the general plot and several subplots (such as Charlotte’s attempts to modify a drone and Juliette’s digging operation). This is important as in each section of the novel, several subplots are intertwined with one another in an alternating fashion. Second, the limited-omniscient aspect adds a sense of suspense and drama to the novel, as the reader only knows about events...