Point of View

The point of view is in the first person; it’s told in Yunior’s perspective. Because Drown is a story collection and does not follow the traditional fiction plot arc, the narrator’s age ranges throughout. In stories that are set in Santo Domingo, the narrator is recalling anecdotes from his childhood. Based on the language and reflection, the reader can safely assume that the anecdotes are being recalled from a much older narrator and not being relayed from the nine-year-old boy who is telling the story in the first-person—though the events happened to the narrator when he was nine years old.

There are a few stories, like “Aurora” and “Drown,” that are written in the simple past and read like a journal, punctuated by short entries rather than an ongoing narrative. This shift in closeness to the narrator stipulates a change in...