Point of View

The book is told from the point of view of Reed. Because the story is told from a single point of view the narrator is unreliable. Reed is a teenager. Her perspective comes from her age and experience. Reed cannot tell the reader accurately what other character's motives are. The first person narrator helps the plot progress, because the reader discovers things along with the narrator. The reader only sees what Reed sees, so everything else is second-hand information.

Setting

The book is set in an upscale, expensive preparatory boarding school in Connecticut. It is a setting of the privileged. The kids at the high school are mostly from wealthy homes, where a good educations is a given. The narrator is the black sheep of the school in that her background is not upper class. It is significant that many jokes are made about Reed's blue-collar...