Point of View

While most of the narrative is told from a third-person point of view and the narrator does not take an active role in the story, the narrator does intersperse first-person observations into the story. In this way, the poet himself becomes a character, in the identity of an unnamed narrator.

However, although the narrator claims to be an acquaintance of Eugene Onegin, and therefore a person in the fictional world of the narrative, the third-person narrator is also omniscient. He knows the deep turmoil that Tatyana goes through in her love for Eugene, even though there is no one to witness it. He knows Tatyana's dream, even though she tells no one about it. The narrator also depicts scenes that neither the narrator nor his friend Eugene could know about, such as the dialogue between Tatyana and her nurse. In this way, the poet is both...