Perspective

Point of View

In five of these nine stories, the point of view is third person, and in the other four the viewpoint is first person. In all of the first-person stories, the narrator is a man, while in three of the third-person stories, the protagonist is a woman. This suggests that the author followed a general rule of choosing first-person when the main character was someone with whom he felt enough personal affinity or comfortableness to observe the story's action through that character's eyes. This might not have been the case for him in the three stories that feature female main characters, but the two remaining third-person stories, "The Runner" and "The Starveling," are interesting for their choice of viewpoint. Both stories feature male protagonists, yet in each case, that person is deeply self-involved. The unnamed runner is a young man intently focused on his body during...