How Green Was My Valley

Huw Morgan is the narrator of the novel as well as the protagonist. He tells the audience the story of his community, seen from his perspective. This limited first-person perspective means that the audience only ever sees and experiences the Valley from Huw’s standpoint. In this way, Huw is the protagonist. He is born into a mining community at a time of radical change. As the years pass from the 19th to the 20th centuries and as Wales and coal production is forced to modernize, the men of the Valley struggle to keep up with the changing world. Huw has both older and younger siblings, meaning that he is caught in the middle of his family just as he is caught between the past and the future. He is defined by this tension, the push and pull of different worlds. He is born too late to live in his father’s past and too soon to reap the benefits of modernity. He is also too clever to be stuck in the mines all his life, so he is told, but too loyal to leave his hometown. As such, the protagonist of the novel represents the contemporary tension of the Welsh valleys.