Point of View

Neal Shusterman writes Scythe in third person point of view. The narrator makes observations and comments on the events occurring to the characters, which implies that Shusterman uses an omniscient narrator. The narrator also zooms in on certain characters for entire chapters, in most cases, or sometimes just for a section of a chapter before switching over to a different character. This large scope allows the narrator to both understand the characters’ minds and provide additional information about the way this world works that the younger characters like Citra and Rowan may not have figured out through their own experiences yet.

One example of a chapter that features a point of view shift occurs in Chapter 7. Shusterman writes, “[Citra] desperately wanted to believe she wasn’t scythe material… Rowan’s feelings on the matter were mixed” (80). In this instance, Shusterman uses only a brief white...