Point of View

This novel is written from the point of view of a third person narrator with an emphasis on Slava. The narrator knows and reports Slava’s feelings and emotions, but does not know those of other characters. The reader learns about the intentions and plans of the other characters in the novel only at the point that Slava learns them. For instance, the reader has no idea that Slava’s grandfather had been charging a fee for the letters that Slava was writing until Slava learned it, when Lazar handed the fee to Slava instead of waiting to give it to Slava’s grandfather.

This point of view is important in the novel because no other point of view would have worked as well to show the way Slava’s thinking about the letters evolved throughout the course of his experience with the Jewish people...