Point of View

The point of view shifts between third and first person throughout the novel. While the italicized sections present a close third-person rendering of Dessa's dreams, the rest of the novel is shared between Nehemiah, Dessa, and Rufel.

By splitting the point of view between these characters, the author is able to explore ownership of the individual's voice, body, and identity in the American South in 1847. Because Dessa's perspective within the prologue and the first section of the novel, The Darky, is largely limited to the events of her dreams, Nehemiah's voice swallows hers. The narrowed psychic distance between the narrator and Nehemiah in Chapters 1 and 2 allows his experience and history to dominate the initial pages of a novel named after the woman to whom the narrative supposedly belongs. Within these first two chapters, Dessa's voice is filtered through Nehemiah's journal entries, meeting dictations, and racially...