Point of View

This poem is written in the third person limited point of view. Although the narrator knows all of the actions of each character, he has little insight into the emotions of any of the characters. Since this is an epic poem and deals with the actions of the main hero rather than his emotions, this limited point of view is ideal. There are a few places in the poem where the narrator speaks directly to his audience and refers to himself as "I" or himself and the audience as "us." One example of this occurs in section 131 where the narrator says, "Let us leave them boasting of their evil deeds..." These references serve to remind the reader that this type of poem once belonged to oral tradition in which stories, such as The Poem of the Cid, were passed from generation to generation through the spoken...