American Short Story Masterpieces

We don’t know the narrator’s name and refer to him only as “Brother.” Why, do you suppose, the author chose to leave his narrator unnamed? How does this impact the reader’s experience?

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I think the author creates a sense of universality to the narrator. The reader can shape the narrator using their own images. The reader fill in the details of the brother who is both protector and tormentor. Not knowing the brother gives the illusion of memory to the story. I think the reader, at some leva, can empathise with the narrator. Many of us have wanted a person close to us to be something they were not in our lives.