Point of View

The novel is narrated by a third person limited narrator, who has insight into what Nella is specifically thinking, as well as to the sentiments of the city of Amsterdam as a whole. This is a unique combination in that Nella’s specific sentiments about what is going on around her are often juxtaposed with the less naive sentiments of Amsterdam’s culture. For example, after Nella finds out about Johannes’s homosexuality, she is confused and upset. Though she has been raised to believe homosexuality is a sin, she rather quickly comes to accept it and understand it is part of Johannes’s soul. However, the narrator continues to clue the reader into just how much of a very real danger homosexuality is in the eyes of Amsterdam’s law. In the chapter “Horseshoe,” the narrator notes that “sodomy” is “after greed and flood...