Point of View

The novelette is narrated by an unnamed and un-described narrator. The narrator appears to be reliable about some things but is deliberately indefinite or un-explicit about most things. The narrative is written in the third-person omniscient point of view. However, this is misleading, because interior thoughts of characters are revealed only sporadically, and, in many ways, the narrative is strongly third-person limited. This narrative ambiguity, coupled with numerous other thematic and structural ambiguities, serves to largely destroy objective meaning and erase easy conclusions. Instead, the narrative structure must be approached with subjective understanding, and it demands simultaneous interpretation on multiple levels. Indeed, the masterful achievement of the novelette is its ability to weave an interesting tale of desire without establishing objective facts, allowing the reader to experience the same confused emotional range as the characters.

Setting

Like many elements in the novelette, the setting is deliberately...