Point of View

Maguire writes Hiddensee using third person point of view. For the majority of the novel, he limits this perspective to Dirk Drosselmeier’s thoughts and experiences. For the main portion of the novel that focuses on Dirk’s perspective, it is important to note that the narrator changes the way he presents details of Dirk’s life over time in conjunction with the way Dirk himself changes as he gets older. In beginning of the novel, when Dirk is young, the narrator refers to Dirk as “young boy” and the narrative is more removed from him because of this. Later, once Maguire further establishes Dirk as the novel’s protagonist, the perspective becomes more limited to Dirk’s personal experiences.

An example of these changes in the intimacy of the narrator’s perspective is present in the opening lines of the first two sections of...