Point of View

The point of view in Are You Afraid of the Dark? takes the form of third person narration. This third person narrative is also omniscient, but only to a certain degree. In order to maintain the suspense, author Sidney Sheldon must withhold certain facts from his otherwise omniscient narration. However, the narrator is easily able to see inside the minds of every character, from major to minor and reveals as much of their thoughts as appropriate. In this way the reader is able to learn about Diane Stevens's and Kelly Harris's relationships to their husbands. The men die at the very outset of the novel, thus it is only through the recollections of the female protagonists that the reader is able to get a sense of the dead men's characters.

Interestingly, this semi-omniscient narrative focuses primarily on the visual action of the story. As a highly...