Point of View

"The Leap" is written from the first-person point of view of the unnamed narrator. Traditionally, this perspective would also indicate that the narrator is the central character of the story, but as early as the opening sentence, the focus is shifted elsewhere: "My mother is the surviving half of a blindfold trapeze act, not a fact I think about much even now that she is sightless, the result of encroaching and stubborn cataracts" (1). From the start of the story, then, the perspective remains in the hands of the narrator but the central character of the story is the narrator's mother, Anna. As the story progresses, the narrator recounts experiences in Anna's life – most of which the narrator was not alive for – but not without returning, now and again, to the present. About halfway through the story, in fact, the narrator describes what it is like...