Point of View

The entirety of Tan Twan Eng’s novel is written in the first person point of view. It begins with Philip as an old man, and after a sequence of events he becomes a story teller, relaying his past to another character. In turn, most of this book takes place in the past with the protagonist as a young man during the second world war. So, the first person point of view for most of the novel has an occasion. In other words, the author has given the novel a reason to be in first person. The story only exists because a character in the book has decided to tell it. One of the benefits of putting the novel in the first person is the direct line the readers have to the protagonist’s thoughts. This is important because many of the decisions that the...