Point of View

Pierre Boulle tells his novel “Planet of the Apes” in the third-person and first-person omniscient reflective narrative mode. The first and final chapters of the novel are told in the third-person narrative, and revolves around Jinn and Phyllis on an interplanetary cruise vacation. They discover the bottle and manuscript containing Ulysse’s account of the planet of Soror, which is itself written in the first-person omniscient perspective from Ulysse’s point of view. This manuscript forms the core, and the majority of, the novel. The section of the novel comprising Ulysse’s account includes the omniscient aspect due to the fact that it is written in reflection long after the events it describes, after which time the manuscript is committed to the bottle, and the bottle to space.

Language and Meaning

Pierre Boulle tells his novel “Planet of the Apes” in language that is traditional...