Point of View

Throughout the novel, Han employs both the third-person and the first-person point of view to mirror the unnamed woman and the Greek teacher’s respective relationships to language. Greek Lessons centers, in large part, on the unnamed woman’s sudden, unexplained muteness. She loses the ability to speak and, apparently, to fully organize her thoughts through words. In chapters focusing on the woman, Han uses the third-person perspective in an effort to replicate the woman’s muteness. The woman is incapable of translating her thoughts to the reader, even via first-person prose. Han, instead, must narrate the woman’s internal life in third-person, thus highlighting the woman’s lack of control over her own words. Importantly, Han utilizes the first-person perspective in chapters revolving around the Greek teacher. Unlike the unnamed woman, the Greek teacher is in full command of his spoken and written faculties...