Point of View

The story uses a first-person narrator, Mkatie's sister. In first-person narratives, the story is told from the point of view of one character, who gives readers information based on what the narrator has seen or heard. In this case, the narrator talks about her sister's life. Throughout the story, the narrator seems very dispassionate, merely reporting events. Even the most emotionally charged scenes, such as the narrator's retelling of Mkatie's husband's pedophilic acts, are described in plain, understated terms. The narrator says: "My sister's husband made their boy exercise in the morning to keep slim. He had him do sit-ups and scrub his fair skin with a loofah in the bath." In another example, the narrator describes the condition of her sister's deteriorating marriage: "By then my sister was keeping the shutters down and sleeping for hours in the afternoons." These simple statements have large implications...