Point of View

Noah Hawley relates Before the Fall in the third-person omniscient perspective from the point of view of a narrator who directly addresses the audience, involving them in the story as it unfolds. The third-person narrator allows the reader unlimited access to the story as it unfolds–both in the past before the crash, in the plane during the crash, and after the crash as well. The third-person narrator gives the reader unique insight into each of the lives, thought processes, beliefs, and motivations of each of the characters, giving the reader a far better understanding of the people involved in or affected by the crash than those people themselves may have. The narrator breaks the fourth wall frequently in order to personally invest readers in events and make them relevant. Consider in the first, untitled chapter of the novel on page 1 how the narrator says...