Point of View

The novel is written in the first person and the past tense. The narrator is the novel’s sole narrator and point-of-view character. The novel often suggests that the narrator is reflecting on her experiences from some later time, although that time is never stated, and the novel gives no indication as to the conditions of the narrator’s life in the narrator’s present. Regardless, the narrator’s retrospection gives the sense that she is still attempting to derive some type of sense or meaning from these events in her life, although by the end of the novel, she appears to have failed to do so in many ways. Because the events and ideas of the novel are presented by the narrator herself, her personality and worldview shape the book’s overall tone and themes. The narrator’s personality can largely be described as...