Point of View

The novel is written from Sem's first person point of view. The novel's title, My Heart, speaks to Sem's attempts to locate the things, experiences, and people that define his heart. In the first section, "Me'Med," the author considers the fragility of the human body through Sem's heart attack. The heart is the physical organ which has sustained Sem's life. Shortly after getting out of surgery, Sem says that while he has "been thinking" and "developing my attitude toward my own death" for many years, "I didn't expect it could come as a consequence of my heart stopping" (16). He has imagined all of his other organs dying out, "but the heart was out of the question, it was there, I thought, to beat for me, just as long as I needed it" (17). Sem's first person point of view allows for this intimate consideration. His narration...