Point of View

The point of view of the novel is third person. This point of view is limited and unreliable, proven by the fact that the narrator very subjectively offers new definitions of words. This point of view is important to the book by virtue of "Tender Buttons: Objects, Food and Rooms" being a collection of poetry, which is a very subjective genre. This point of view allows the reader to become intimately familiar with the author's thoughts and feelings about many different things by being able to see how she redefines these many words.

These poems are told without dialogue. Even the term exposition does not seem quite appropriate for the style of writing that Gertrude Stein chooses in this collection of poems. Using automatic writing, Gertrude Stein paints word portraits through a form of stream-of-consciousness. This conveys an image of the words to the reader to...