Point of View

"Here Lies Arthur" is related from the first-person, limited perspective. The narrator is the central protagonist in the novel and is present in nearly every scene in the novel. Sometimes the narrator will relate events second-hand; sometimes the narrator will imagine what events probably were like. In general, however, the narrator is reliable if somewhat unobservant. The narrative point of view is complicated somewhat by the narrator's strange transition from female to male to female to male during the course of several years. This transition is of course social only but the perception of the narrator by others and, especially, by the narrator her- or himself is a complex and subtle process. This component of the point of view is strongly reinforced by the advent of the character of Peredur—a male raised as a female—and the subsequent relationship between the narrator and...