Point of View

West With Giraffes employs a first-person point of view, relating the events of the first trans-continental shipment of giraffes from Woody’s perspective. The first-person narrative structure gives the audience a window on the real life experiences of a Dust Bowl orphan, and increases the reader’s connection with the historical setting of the novel. At the time of the story’s telling, Woody is an old man in a VA convalescent home. The author delineates his telling of the story from his present reality in the VA home by alternating tenses. The story of the journey with giraffes is written in the past tense, and the happenings in the convalescent home are related in the present tense.

While Woody is only a boy at the time of the event’s occurrence, the author establishes him as a reliable narrator based upon the wisdom of...