Point of View

The poem is told from the first-person singular point of view. This is largely because the poem itself is the speaker’s recollection of a memory from their youth, therefore it is their own story about their past experiences. As such, the majority of the poem is in the past tense, as the speaker narrates their memory of the events that took place. However, in spite of the fact that the speaker knows everything that is going to happen in the narrative, they only reveal this information to the reader incrementally. Thus, while the speaker themselves is technically omniscient, the story is told from the limited point of view of their younger self who does not yet know what is going to happen to them.

The overall perspective of the speaker is closely aligned with that of many writers and artists from the era of...