Point of View

The narration is written in the first person and the present tense, entirely from David’s perspective. The use of the present tense is highly significant because it means that the narrative is being portrayed immediately from each given moment of David’s experience. David is not narrating the story in a retrospective fashion from some point in the future; he is conveying the narrative to the reader in the heat of each moment. This perspective thusly emphasizes the immediate emotional impacts of David’s experience. For example, when David feels stressed and afraid about school or about the Boston Latin entrance exam, his sense of fear is not tempered by a sense of distance from that moment. This chronological and emotional immediacy is necessary in part because uncertainty of the future is so central to the narrative. For example, David does not know if...