In the discussion of setting one of the main factors that was stressed was the role it played in revealing the narrator's inner life: that is, everything was seen from his point of view. As is generally recognised, point of view is an essential element in understanding how we perceive and interpret any piece of fiction. Carden emphasises Babel's search, from his earliest stories, to find the right 'voice' for each story. It is precisely the point of view that provides the unity of the individual stories, and of the Red Cavalry cycle as a whole. As she says: 'The voice becomes the story. We attend to its tone more than to what it is saying. It is the cement that holds the fragments together, that gives a surface to the story'. It is perhaps generally true that with a 'firstperson narrator' type of story point of...