In the development of a text, an author must carefully select a narrative voice through which to convey his story. The narrative voice is the point of view from which the story is told, and it acts as the medium through which the reader experiences the text, providing structure for the literary work. The selection of the narrative voice is therefore an important aspect of the author’s rhetorical strategy as it defines the way that the reader relies on the narrator for information regarding the story. Notably, the author, narrator, and characters are not always in alignment, and instead there may exist a separation between what information is provided to a reader and what information is supplied to the character. An example of this separation…show more content… Notably, while Perowne does not enjoy being a spectator of lives by reading literature, he does so freely with his observations of others. This is in part because literature would force him to adopt the perspective of the characters about whom he reads, whereas his tendency to impose narratives on other people allows him to do so in an egocentric manner through only his own lens and perspective. Perowne does not project into the perspectives of others, but rather he projects onto them, choosing his own interpretation of others without having to engage them directly. As such, there is separation between Perowne and those around him—the “mass”—and the third person point of view taken by the novel parallels this separation between the narrator and Perowne. However, while Perowne cannot assume the perspective of others, the narrator provides a full understanding of his perspective, which again reinforces the separation between Perowne and the third person narrator, emphasizing Perowne’s inability to see the perspectives of others while dually presenting Perowne’s perspective perfectly, which reinforce the value of adopting another’s