Point of View

This story is in first-person, from the perspective of the protagonist, so the protagonist is the narrator of the story. Thus, the narrator is limited to the unnamed protagonist’s interpretations on events. Ishiguro’s decision to make the protagonist the first-person narrator of the story serves the plot and theme development in this story. The relevance of the protagonist being unnamed has been explored in the “Characters” section of this study guide.

Concerning the plot development, the fact that the narration is limited to the protagonist’s perception of events retains the ambiguity that is essential to the effectiveness of the story. For example, the subtle descriptions of the fish resembling fugu at the end of the story become ambiguous, because the protagonist may not suspect that his father intends to poison him, but the reader would assume this based on how the story...