Points of View

The points of view shift throughout the novel. In Chapter 0, the point of view is that of an invisible fly-on-the-wall who appears at a social gathering in Warsaw on a cold wintry night. The narrator scans the room and describes the various characters, wondering about their relationships, then decides to follow them outside into the snow and into their lives. As the tale progresses, the point of view shifts among the various characters from Maryna to Bogdan to Ryszard and back to the narrator. Telegrams, letters, and diaries shift the point of view from one character to another, and move the action forward. The fluid point of view illustrates that there are many different ways of understanding events within the novel. For example, at the same time that Bogdan is a faithful, devoted husband to Maryna, he discovers within himself a lust for the young Mexican...