Point of View

The story is told from the first-person, past-tense point of view of protagonist and narrator China (pronounced CHEE-na) Iron. China is a young Argentine woman in her mid-late teens who has had a troubled life limited in both emotional and physical scope. The story she tells is one of multi-faceted transformation, with the narrative offering both descriptions of her outer experiences and the inner transformations resulting from those experiences.

Different aspects of both China’s inner and outer experiences define the book’s overall thematic points of view. There are references, in both the story’s events and in China’s descriptions of events, to the book’s thematic interests in the power and value of nature and the definition of civilization. There are also both inner and outer manifestations of the book’s thematic interest in experiences of freedom. China experiences a wide range...