“This character describes the trees and the road with so much feeling, but then he withholds any kind of description when it comes to his own life or the people in it. Maybe he’s in denial about who he is or what he wants. But he can still describe the way his father looks at him or the woman in the bar—and his desires or his repulsions can sneak through in those descriptions. Even if he’s not aware of his own motivations, the writer has to be aware of them. We have to see around what he’s not saying. That’s the beauty of having a first-person narrator.”
