Point of View

When Ghosts Come Home has a third person limited point of view: the protagonists do not tell their story, but the narrative follows them closely, giving us privileged access to their experiences and inner thoughts. The narrator is impersonal (only offering feelings and viewpoints that belong to characters) but omniscient, occasionally stepping outside of or expanding on the protagonists’ immediate thoughts. For instance, the novel provides plenty of information in order to broaden our understanding of the world to which the characters belong. Oak Island is “thirteen miles long and four miles wide at its widest,” while “to people who lived there, it felt like a place that had either gone undiscovered or had been forgotten by the rest of the state” (12 – 13). Strictly speaking, none of this information falls outside Winston’s knowledge. As sheriff, he would certainly be familiar with the dimensions and demographics...