Point of View

The author writes Who They Was from his protagonist Gabriel's first person point of view. By employing this narrative perspective, the author allows the reader access to all of Gabriel's most intimate thoughts and feelings. Though Gabriel is not often emotive or explicitly expressive with his friends and family, he conveys these aspects of his emotional and psychological experience with his narrative audience. The author establishes this separation between Gabriel's internal and external worlds at the start of the novel. In the opening chapter, "Don't Watch Face," after robbing a woman with his fellow South Killy gang members, Gabriel sits lost in thought staring out the car window. Of the rich woman they robbed he thinks: "She already didn't care about me before she encountered me and it's all because we're locked away in our own little worlds" (8). Yet Gabriel does not verbalize this sentiment...