South of the Slot

Point of view is an important device in the story. London chooses the third-person omniscient point of view. This means that the narrator is an external observer of the story and employs the third-person pronouns like “he” and “she” to situate and describe the narrative. “Omniscient” means that the narrator possesses unlimited knowledge of the characters and their world, and can access the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of all characters. Omniscient narration permits the author to build individualized personalities for any of the characters by revealing their internal lives to the reader. This perspective provides a comprehensive and all-encompassing view of the story, as opposed to first-person narration, where readers are limited in what the author will permit them to be told. In “South of the Slot,” readers can track Freddie’s changing thoughts and feelings as he transforms into Bill permanently, and this is critical to our understanding of the main conflict in the story.

Literary irony is the representation of an incongruity between appearance and reality, or meaning and expression within a literary work. Irony in this story serves as a vehicle for social commentary, exposing the contradictions and complexities inherent in societal structures and individual transformations during the early 20th century.