Point of View

The novel opens in the first person. The narrator is Horacio Oliveira, and large sections of the novel are long soliloquies from his point of view. As a narrator, his point of view is subjective, at best. When intoxicated - as he often is - his descriptions become garbled and easily diverted into diatribes. When sober, his accounts are heavily influenced by emotion and neurosis, given to long explanations, rationalizations, and polemics. Near the end of the novel, Horacio has entered a delusional state and sees visions of La Maga.

Much of the time, however, the point of view changes to an omniscient third person, though the impression given from the work as a whole is that these passages are anecdotes presented by Oliveira. When the third person narrator examines the thoughts of a given character, it is generally the thoughts of Horacio himself.

Two notable...