Point of View

Karen E. Bender tells her collection of short stories, “Refund”, in both the third and first-person narrative modes. “Reunion,” “Theft,” “Anything for Money,” “The Third Child,” “Refund,” “A Chick From My Dream Life,” and “Candidate” are told in the third-person limited omniscient perspective. “This Cat,” “The Loan Officer’s Visit,” “The Sea Turtle Hospital,” “Free Lunch,” “For What Purpose?” and “What the Cat Said” are told in the first-person, limited omniscient perspective. In the stories told in first person, the reader becomes a personal confidante to the narrator, understanding the narrator’s thoughts and feelings about events and situations, such as the narrator’s thoughts about the cat’s death in “This Cat” when she equates herself indirectly to the cat. In the stories told in third person, the reader becomes an observer of incidents that play out as describe by the narrator, such as...