Point of View

Ellen Hopkins tells her novel "Impulse" in the first-person perspective, narrated by each of her three main protagonists, Tony, Vanessa, and Conner. This is done because the themes and subject of the novel are vastly personal, and the best way to tell the story Hopkins tells is to let the character tell it themselves. This enables the reader to not only establish personal connections with the characters, but to also understand the evolution of their thought patterns and how the characters grow and change. Furthermore, in a novel where the characters do not always reveal their innermost secrets to one another, the reader is still privy to these secrets, as well as to the motivations and understandings of the characters.

Setting

The setting of the novel is cold, blustery country near Tahoe, at Aspen Springs psychiatric hospital. This works very well as the setting of the...