Point of View

The story is entirely filtered through the perspective of the first-person narrator. The narration alternates between present and past tense apropos of the narrative's varying subjects. The narrator is separate from the author, but in the fiction of the piece, the narrator is supposedly the one who is writing the piece. Because of this strict adherence to the narrator’s perspective, the story’s themes and ideas are all inherently connected in various ways to the narrator’s own feelings and personal outlook. For example, the narrator describes the town as containing an essence of sadness, isolation, and aimlessness, which he seems to observe in the life and atmosphere of the town. However, this atmosphere may potentially be a projection of the narrator’s own sadness and loneliness. The narrator often implies and even admits that his own existence is heavily defined by these feelings...