Point of View

This story is in past tense, and it is written with third-person limited narration, which is focused on the protagonist, Tom Benecke. The limited narration serves various purposes. Some of these include the fact that it epitomizes Benecke’s love for his wife and the fact that it intensifies the fear that Benecke feels while he is on the ledge.

The narration emphasizes the strength of Tom and Clare Benecke’s relationship. Limited narration is characterized by the scope of the narrator’s knowledge being limited to the knowledge of one or more characters in the story. At the beginning of the story, when Benecke is talking to his wife, he notices that her voice is muffled, so “he [knows] her head and shoulders [are] in the bedroom closet” (4). This creates the notion that Benecke knows his apartment and his wife well, because he is...