Narrative

"Lullaby" is told from the third-person-restricted point of view. That means that, although the narrator is not a character in the story, the perspective of the story is entirely from that of the main character, Ayah. An old woman in the present tense of the story, Ayah thinks back on key events in her life. The story thus interweaves the present time of the old woman sitting outside, then going to look for her husband at the local bar, with her memories from childhood through old age. The story is told in non-chronological order, jumping from one time period or incident to another and back again, reproducing the old woman's thought patterns rather than a standard narrative flow of events from beginning to end.

The Oral Tradition

In all of her work, Silko is interested in representing the storytelling style of the Native American oral tradition in the...