Point of View

Sepetys' novel, I Must Betray You, is written from the first-person point of view of Cristian Florescu, a seventeen year old growing up in Romania during the 1980s. The author chooses to employ this lens in order to authenticate the narrative frame. At the outset of the novel, there is a prologue that claims that the manuscript was “found next to a grave” (x). Later on, in the epilogue, Cristian tells the reader that he wrote a novel about his life in Romania, before and during the rebellion that overturned Ceausescu, and left it near Bunu’s grave. If the author had written the narrative from a third person point of view, the novel’s perspective would have suggested that it is not the same writing that the protagonist alludes to authoring. Additionally, granting the read access to Cristian’s private thoughts and emotions allows...