Point of View

Wilder opens his book with his blunt reportorial style, which would be categorized as Remote Third Person; that is, description made from a distance in space and time. When he enters into Brother Juniper’s head to tell the reader what the priest is thinking, this would either be considered Close Third Person, or taking the more remote attitude into consideration, Omniscient, a point of view technique in which the narrator knows everything that happens or is thought about. But then at the end of Part One the author uses first person pronouns (I and we), so here he has slipped into First Person point of view. If he only used “we” it might be considered Editorial Third Person, but the “I” moves it to First Person, and from that point forward the book reads as if it were told to the reader as a...