Point of View

The novel is written mostly in the third person, from the point of view of a narrator with insight into the thoughts and motivations of the main character Ransom. The narration is mostly descriptive, but the narrator is also sometimes present in the story, as when he refers to events which take place outside the main story line. At the end of the book, the narrator takes over the story entirely and explains how he knows the main character personally and how he came to write the story based on the actual experiences of the main character. In the final chapter, the point of view shifts to the first person in the form of an excerpt from a letter written by Ransom to the narrator.

By shifting the points of view at the end of the novel, the author adds another layer of fiction to the...