Identity

Throughout the novel, the author uses Owen’s first person point of view narration in order to enact his thematic explorations regarding identity. The author introduces his interest in examining the relationship between the individual’s internal and external worlds in the scenes where Owen attends his first Jungle Narratives classes in Part 1. While discussing Heart of Darkness, the professor, Tony, says that everything in the novel is “filtered through” the narrator “Marlow’s consciousness, and therefore inflected by his biases and aversions. This was the power of point of view, Tony explained” (33). He goes on to tell his class that the details the narrator describes “are important” because the individual’s “interior life is mirrored in the exterior world” (34). Tony’s lecture on point of view immediately addresses the ways in which the plot, structure, and explorations central to Groundskeeping are dictated by Owen’s...