Point of View

Because the Strange Pilgrims is a collection of short stories, each of the enclosed works is written from a distinct point of view. “Bon Voyage, Mr. President,” is written from the third person point of view. The stories “The Saint,” “Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane,” and “I Sell My Dreams,” are all written from the first person points of view of unnamed narrators. In “The Saint,” the narrator’s unexpected encounter with “Margarito Duarte after twenty-two years on one of the narrow secret streets in Trastevere,” triggers his recollections about Margarito’s dead daughter and Margarito’s lifelong search for “his own canonization” (36, 53). In “Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane,” the narrator’s trip to New York from Paris is dictated by his encounter with a woman who looks like “a supernatural apparition” (54). In “I Sell My Dreams,” when the narrator hears that a woman in...