Point of View

The novel is told from the perspective of a third-person narrator, limited to Marion, Zoey, Val, and the Rock itself. The Prologue opens with a present tense universality: "Everyone knows about the island of Sawkill Rock" (iii). Otherwise, the novel is told in the past tense. This proves the narrator's omniscience, with knowledge beyond the scope of the characters' experience. In this way, the narrator has the ability to understand and convey the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of a force of nature.

The narrator tells most of the story through the perspectives of teens Marion, Zoey, and Val. The narrator has access to their thoughts, sliding between describing their inner world and conveying their direct thoughts, sometimes marked by italics. Each of their perspectives are differentiated by the narrator's use of tone and voice. By collapsing into their thoughts through free indirect discourse, the narrator...