Point of View

The point of view of A Psalm for the Wild-Built is exclusively third-person. Dex is the main character; we get direct psychological insight into their character, even though the narration is in third-person. The reader is allowed to invest significantly in Dex's situation. Basically, they are a young adult who is attempting to figure out what they want to do with their life after a series of false starts and attempts to find what is meaningful to them. They begin with a job tending a rooftop garden in Panga's only City, but they decide that they might be able to find deeper meaning in doing work as a tea monk out in the country; they do this for a couple years, but then they decide that they are once again feeling unfulfilled, so, on a whim, they set out to a place called Hart's Brow...