Point of View

The Queue is narrated by a non-exegetic omniscient third-person narrator. Sometimes, however, for a chapter or even a paragraph, the narrator takes on the perspective of one of the named characters and remains limited for a time. In a very subtle form of free indirect discourse, the narrator seems to take on aspects of the personalities of the characters it aligns itself with. For example, Nagy’s perspective is more cynical and sweeping: “Despite how often the Gate released these promising updates, it still had never reopened, and nothing ever really changed. All it provided was hope for people to cling to and a reason to stay in the queue” (110). At other times, the narrator pulls back to take a panoramic view of the queue, or of the actions of larger-than-life figures like the short-haired woman or the man in the galabeya: “But the woman...