Point of View

The novel is told from the perspective of a third person omniscient narrator, with occasional depictions of free indirect discourse and shifts into a limited perspective. The omniscient narrator provides an unbiased account of Dinesh's thought process and feelings, describing the memories that filter through Dinesh's mind among other associations. The shifts into free indirect discourse present Dinesh's thoughts and feelings unfiltered through a narrator. These shifts are typically motivated by cognitive dissonance--as Dinesh struggles to reconcile opposing possibilities, the past and present, and his own feelings, the narrative focalizes his stream of consciousness. An example of this shift can be seen in the moment where Dinesh's wonder is presented directly within the narrative when thinking about the Jaffna town he visited as a child, "Where were they all coming from and where were they going, and why always with such urgency?" (169). The question lacks...