Point of View

Point of view is probably the most striking and significant stylistic feature of "Death in the Woods." The story is narrated in the first person by a man looking back on an event that happened in his hometown when he was a youth.

At first his qualifications for telling the old woman's story seem somewhat dubious. The narrator is limited in his view of events—a fact that he frequently calls to his readers' attention. To him, the old woman was "nothing special. She was one of the nameless ones that hardly anyone knows, but she got into my thoughts. I have just suddenly now, after all these years, remembered her and what happened." He initially describes the old woman only as a type, not an individual, and admits that his sources of information are not particularly reliable.

Much of the old woman's past he...