Point of View

Shuggie Bain is told from the third person point of view of an omniscient narrator. The narrator is not a character who participates in the action of the novel. As such, the narrator treats each character even-handedly. The narrator shows awareness of characters' moral failings, however none of them is ever condemned outright. The integrity of the characters' thoughts, reactions, and emotional states is never undermined no matter how absurd or irrational these may be. Often the narrator will couch the depiction of a setting or milieu using one the thoughts, words, or deeds of different characters. For example, the narrator depicts Shug contemplating the city of Glasgow through the windshield of his taxi as a point of departure for an exposition on the state of the city as a whole. "Glasgow was losing its purpose, and he could see it all clearly from behind...