Point of View

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey is written from a third person limited point of view. This means that the third person narrator’s narrative access is limited to the main character Ptolemy Grey’s consciousness. Throughout the novel, this narrator inhabits Ptolemy’s mind and renders the world through his memory-distorted lens. Although the narrator is an entity separate from Ptolemy, the narrator does not impose neat narrative scaffolding onto Ptolemy’s often disorienting slurry of memories, visions, dreams, and hallucinations. The reader can refer to a passage from the start of the novel for one prime example of this relationship between the third person narrator and the main character. In the passage immediately following Ptolemy’s phone conversation with Hilly, the narrator says: “Ptolemy could hear fire engines blaring in the distance. There were floods down south and Beethoven was deaf. Dentifrice toothpaste...