Point of View

The short story is written from the third person point of view. In the early passages of the piece, this third person narration is limited to Herminia's perspective. The narrator inhabits Herminia's consciousness in order to illustrate the effects of the economic crisis, and repeated border crossings on her mind and spirit. The author establishes this closeness between the narrator and Herminia in the story's opening paragraph: "All of them except the grandmother were hungry...When they started making these trips, old Herminia stopped eating, fearful that her daughter and granddaughter might abandon her on a backroad near the border. She'd turned hunger into a form of self-protection" (1). These lines originate from Herminia's mind, and illustrate the ways in which she sees herself, and understands her decision not to eat. Though Herminia is in the company of Koralia and Milagros in this opening scene, the...