There There - Time Shifts and Tension

So in thinking about There There, I keep trying to truly understand the concept of "angle of discovery" and all of the aspects it encompasses since, not only are there POV shifts in terms of who is telling the story but also when it's told in first person (page 43 in Opal's pov for instance) versus third person and even in second person on a couple occasions (Thomas Frank's section on page 208), the narrative takes us through different angles of discovery with shifts in time and when the character who is narrating is in time. While the shifts in time happen throughout the novel, I'm going to focus on "Part IV Powwow" to kind of walk through how it functions and what it did to me as a reader.
Okay, so we start off with Orvil arriving with his brothers in the coliseum and him getting ready for the Grand Entry and we're in his body as he dances and then looks to see if he can find his brothers in the crowd. IMMEDIATELY, we're put into Tony Loneman who is on his way to the powwow and getting off BART at the right stop after his interaction with the white lady who only knows how to state the obvious so she can tell the story later - at this point, it feels like we're pushed back in time a bit but it's unclear if this is happening concurrently with the Grand Entry or not. Regardless, when we're in Blue's pov next, IT'S THE MORNING OF and way before Orvil and his brother were on their way to the powwow (which occurred in part III). From here, we're pushed forward in time again to Dene setting up his storytelling booth and then Opal's perspective since she wants to see Orvil dance but doesn't want to alert her grandchildren (and this entire time, I'm just waiting for the shoe to drop because Orange has set up the narrative to this point that we KNOW what's gonna go down at the powwow as much as we would like to see Edwin meet his dad and Blue to meet her mom and Jacquie to be with her family again 'cause she's dealt with a lot of shit). BUT THEN we're pushed back to the morning of AGAIN in Edwin's perspective with them arriving and bringing the safe with the gift cards into the powwow which HURTS 'cause it makes sense to bring it in now but WE KNOW. So from here we're kept in the morning of with Calvin's perspective before being pushed into THE NIGHT BEFORE with Daniel's perspective which hurts in a different way as well as with Jacquie the night before at the hotel with Harvey (which is a moment I could unpack, but for now I wanna focus on how these time shifts impacted me by mapping them out a little too much maybe).
From here, we get into Octavio's pov the day of during the powwow which increases the tension because WE KNOW WHAT'S COMING. This tension, at least for me, became broken into a different kind of tension with Edwin because we're faced with this extended moment of whether Blue will meet Jacquie and when she does will she say, "hey I think you're my mom" and address the question that has been threaded throughout the narrative of, who am I and what makes me Native? Am I a "real" Native or a phony? This tension remains unresolved as we shift back into Thomas Frank's pov which, I *think* is happening concurrently because it ends with the sounds of someone screaming which increases the tension of what we know is coming and is sustained in Loother and Lony's section which ends the same - with "what they think is the sound of people screaming" (264).
This tension is then both broken and sustained in Daniel's section because of how the action is removed from the coliseum through the VR goggles while we also get that sense of doom and OH NO with the interaction between Daniel and his mom and how "it's almost sad enough, the sound in her voice, to make him want to leave the drone up there, leave it all alone and just go eat with her" (266). That interaction, while so short brought forward a lot of the emotions that had built throughout the narrative for me and allowed them to catch up within all of the cumulating tension in part IV.
WHICH BRINGS US TO THE BIG BAD.  Blue's section here is where a lot of the momentum picked up, it was a small signpost that started out with her awareness of the safe and the detail of Edwin eating the sunflower seeds shell and all and immediately throws us into Dene who hears the shots and is saved by a pole in his booth. This is then contrasted with Orvil, Calvin, Thomas Frank, and Bill who all feel the ground and feel themselves as they are hit by the bullets. Four successive sections held at that level of 10 tension through the action we are witnessing.
This tension is held in a different way by Opal, Jacquie, and Blue acting as the ones who find those they can and get them out of the coliseum and to the hospital. Slowing down for a moment here, it was in these few sections between Orvil and Blue, that while I couldn't help but turn the page because a part of me wanted them all to get out, I knew how it would end and that there were characters like Calvin, Thomas Frank, and Bill who we don't get to see receiving medical attention and that, due to Bill's location, I questioned when he would be found. I knew this answer even as I read it.
Opal's final section, while it brought the tension down from a 10, it created tension through information (Opal's observation of everyone there in the hospital waiting room - pg 284) and revelation (her voice and Two-Shoes voice being "hers and not hers [...] it can't come from anywhere else. There is only Opal" - pg 285). The thing that kept the tension high here as well also came from her angle of discovery in that her narration came from the adult in the moment rather than an adult looking back so that while we had been given her history, we experience the eight swings of the door before never hearing the answer from the doctor.
Finally, we end the novel as we began it with Tony Loneman. Here is where the shifts in time within his section and his angle of discovery really interested me. We start with him back in time on the field as the first shots are being fired and we're given the play-by-play of what happened (is happening? Happened prior to the moment on the previous page but currently happening through the character of Tony) and time is slowed as Tony turns into a Kodiak that will not stop charging even after being shot multiple times. Time here speeds up as he grapples with Charles on the ground before being slowed down again as he sinks into the ground and becomes a child again. So here's where I think the angle of discovery is interesting because rather than it being the informed adult looking back, we have that child voice that recounts as the child while also coming away with some kind of understanding because of the bubbles and that question and statement (answer?) - "what are we? [...] you know. You know they're there [...] they're right there, Grandma, I can see them with my own eyes" (288-289) which is then followed by the play scene with the Autobots which I could unpack but I won't for now. In this moment however, I find it so interesting to then shift back into that moment as Tony is lying on the field and we're removed from time completely with the final line of "where he'll always be, even now it is morning" (290). This, in a way, makes me think about how in Flash Fiction this semester there are all these stories about writing and writers, but in a different way I think this final line made me aware of myself as a reader? But yeah, the way time is shifted around and played with had me thinking a lot because Orange had all these balls in the air and while we as readers may not have felt like we got to see where exactly they all landed it was clear that he knew it down to the moment in time and how as a writer, while there is the time the narrative takes place within and the time it took to both write and read the book, he kind of existed outside of all that time.