Point of View

The Golden House is told by a first-person retrospective narrator named René. René recounts his time knowing the Goldens, speculating on their past and revealing parts of his own life. Because René, as a character, is implicated within the Goldens’ story, there are two different “Renés” in the novel: René the narrator, who knows how the novel ends, for he is the one telling the story; and René the character, who does not know how everything ends because he is involved in the action of the drama. Often, René the narrator will employ the literary technique known as “prolepsis,” alerting the reader of what will happen in the novel before the event occurs within the drama of the novel. For example, René tells the reader that he “miss[es] his parents more than [he] can say” before his parents have actually perished in the...