Point of View

Yelena Akhtiorskaya tells her novel “Panic in a Suitcase” from the third-person omniscient point of view. This is done for several reasons. First, though Frida and Pasha prove to be the main characters in the novel, the novel also touches on the lives of various other members of the family at one time or another, including Marina, Esther, Robert, and Levik. As such, the third-person narrative mode provides a unifying voice tying together distinct lives and circumstances. The third-person point of view also allows the author to include important information to the reader about the characters, easily and readily supplied to the plot as it evolves. This also coincides with the omniscient aspect of the third-person point of view, in that it allows the writer to add essential information to the plot as the plot unfolds – information which the characters themselves might not stop to...