Point of View

Yoko Ogawa tells her short story collection “Revenge” in the first-person limited-omniscient perspective. Each of the eleven stories is told by a principal narrator for that story, and that story alone, although some of the narrators appear as non-narrating characters in other stories (such as the stepmother who narrates “Old Mrs. J” but then appears in “The Little Dustman” and “Tomatoes and the Full Moon”. The first-person narrative gives the reader a personal, firsthand glimpse into the thoughts, emotions, and lives of the narrator and the events of the story that surround the narrator. The limited-omniscient aspect of this type of narrative allows for a degree of mystery, drama, and suspense, as the reader only ever learns as much as is important to that narrator in that story – but from these bits and pieces of information, connections are formed across all eleven stories though the...