The Peregrine, CHAPTER II

The Peregrine.

After the obtrusive, even intrusive, narrators of "The Pirate" and The Peregrine, CHAPTER I, CHAPTER II reverts to the anonymous, invisible, metaphysical, almost non-existent but nevertheless omniscient narrator of most modern prose fiction. This genderless narrator, never drawing attention to him/herself (neither pronoun is appropriate), presents a third person account of the actions and thoughts of a single character, usually only one such character in each chapter or continuous narrative passage. This time the character in question is Peregrine Joachim Henry. "Peregrine" is his Nomad ship. "Joachim" is his family name. "Henry" is his given name.

Joachim "...entered the airlock." (p. 3) Thus, we know what he does.

"...this was no assembly to miss, he thought." (ibid.) Thus, we know what he thinks.

"Joachim decided that a shave was in order..." (ibid.) Thus, we know some other inner processes. 

While we are inside Joachim's head, we should not know of anyone else's inner processes except insofar as Joachim infers them from facial expressions, tones of voice etc. The omniscient narrator can, not necessarily will, take us inside other characters' heads in subsequent chapters. Having read the book before, I know that this will be done but here we are analysing the text as if reading it for the first time. One acquaintance who reads a lot told me that he never notices povs (points of view) but I think that he would notice if the narration became incoherent. When I met a French guy who was reading Dune in English, I remarked that the narrative does not keep the povs consistent and he replied, "I have read it," meaning that he had noticed it.

Anderson's Introduction informs or reminds us that:

"The story...is part of a 'future history' which I subsequently abandoned, but can stand independently of this." (p. vi)

It can but it is better where it belongs. Now we know what became of the Nomads who began in "Gypsy."