Drown Lesson Plan

Why is this story written in the third person? What effect does this have on how we perceive Ysrael as opposed to the other narrators in this collection? (No Face)

This is the first story in the collection that is written in the third person. Inevitably, the third person, even a “close” third person in which one character’s thoughts are apparent, creates a sort of distance between the reader and the main character: the reader cannot feel, to the same degree, that they are in a narrator’s head. This is notable because in the opening story, Ysrael is “othered” perhaps more than any other character in the collection. He is an outcast, constantly berated and abused. Thus,...