A narrator’s exclusive viewpoint can undermine a novel’s critical intentions.

Evidence

Indeed, this matter of skewed or uncertain perception is an insistent theme, making the novel less determinate than it may at first appear. Molly Clark Hillard suggests that one theme in Saturday is the difficulty of “interpretive reading in a post-9/11 world.” As the story progresses, Perowne finds himself misreading not only the appearance of the burning plane but also the motives of the antiwar protesters who block off the streets; the social and class implications of his encounter with Baxter (preferring to see it in neuroscientific terms); and the authorship of Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach,” which his daughter reads to Baxter while the family is held hostage. The obvious complacencies of Perowne’s privileged stance indirectly gesture toward the partiality and subjective nature of his viewpoint. Indeed, the novel displays a certain ambivalence about its central character’s confident pronouncements, but it fails to show any other point of view more than fleetingly. It is for this reason that it ultimately does nothing to counter the political limitations of its resolutely white, middle-class outlook. Perowne is constitutionally unable to read any cause–consequence relationship between his luxurious lifestyle and the impoverished existence of those down-and-outs and junkies who occupy the park benches at night. The thought he does bestow on them is merely the usual watery liberal regret that there are people worse off than he is. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 108

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supplies the critical vocabulary the reader seeks: a novel that is rhetorically ambivalent yet formally monovocal fails to counter Islamophobia. Test against Hamid’s first-person monologue and Naqvi’s focalized narration.
• DEEPTHINKING: The distinction between a novel that gestures at critique and one that structurally enables it - form (single viewpoint, no counterweight) overriding professed ambivalence - is the sharp analytic tool in the chapter so far.
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘fleetingly shown alternative viewpoints’ as a formal test separating contesting from quietly reinforcing novels.