The Human Stain | Style

The Human Stain Style

Point of View

The point of view of this novel tends to shift often from first person to third person. The novel is written as though one of the characters, Nathan Zuckerman, has written it out of a sense of respect for his dead friend, Coleman Silk. The entire novel is written in this voice, with many sections of the novel written in Nathan's first person point of view. This narration is somewhat unreliable, however, due to the fact that Nathan does not have first hand knowledge of many of the facts, thoughts, and emotions he reports upon. Nathan openly admits this to the reader, explaining that he has used his novelist's imagination to fill in the gaps in his narration.

The third person point of view is used from the vantage point of several different characters, with snapshots of not just events these characters experienced without Nathan's attendance, but also passages full...
(read more)