Point of View

"Roughing It" is a loosely autobiographical novel about a writer who leaves his mid-western city to pursue fortune in the Nevada Territory during the Silver mining fever of the early 1860's. The author narrates a journey, which starts with the pretext of helping his brother serve his duty as Secretary for the Governor of the Nevada Territory. The narrator's real intent, however, is to profit from the thriving mining business in Nevada and California. The novel is presented as an informal journal built from personal recollections written over a decade after the facts reported. As such, the novel is entirely written in the first person. The use of the first person point of view allows the author to present the events as a collage of multiple personal anecdotes and impressions of the events and the scenery and the people he encountered during his journey. The author...