Point of View

Remarkably Bright Creatures employs a narrative structure that alternates between first and third person points of view. The third person is used exclusively in chapters from a human’s perspective, while first person narration is limited to chapters from Marcellus the octopus’s perspective.

Use of the first person point of view from Marcellus’s perspective enhances the author’s personification of the octopus, enabling the audience to connect more fully with a non-human character. This creates an emotional investment in his story that would not be possible from the third person point of view. Though the human characters in the story are more relatable because they bear more resemblance to the audience, the octopus’s first person narration bring his character several degrees closer to the audience than any of the humans who speak only in the third person.

Within this structure, Marcellus is...