Point of View

The novel is written from the third person point of view. Throughout the narrative, this third person narrator traces the main character Bobby Western’s experiences most closely. Although the third person narration is arguably limited to Bobby’s psyche, the narrator infrequently delves into and inhabits Bobby’s heart and mind. The reader is therefore left to rely upon Bobby’s interactions and conversations with his companions in order to understand his character’s complicated interiority. Within these scenes of dialogue, however, the narrator does not provide contextualizing narrative information. Rather, the dialogue appears on the page in a series of unhinged lines, which are true to McCarthy’s unique and sparse style. The narrator, therefore, is compelling the reader to study the characters’ words in order to understand their thoughts and feelings. This means that she does not employ the objective correlative nor...