Point of View

Since Alice Hoffman's novel "Incantation" deals with the experiences of sixteen year-old Estrella di Madrigold during the Spanish Inquisition, Hoffman chooses to let Estrella narrate the story in the first-person perspective. Beyond the fact that this is Estrella's story, allowing the novel to be narrated in first-person allows the reader a much more intimate encounter with the events of the books, and gives the reader the intimate confidence of the narrator. In so doing, the reader is able to experience firsthand the horrors of both the Inquisition, and the terrible tragedy that Estrella must somehow manage to weather.

Setting

The setting of Alice Hoffman's novel "Incantation" is that of the Encalfora, in the region of Aragon, in the nation of Spain. The setting of the novel works perfectly for the novel, especially with respect to the themes of the plot. Spain, at the time of the...