Point of View

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is written from an unnamed, unidentified first-person narrator's point of view. The author establishes this unconventional narrative stance in the story's opening passages with lines including: "At present, so I am told, the high gods of medicine have decreed that the first cries of the young shall be uttered upon anesthetic air of a hospital" and "I shall tell you what occurred, and let you judge for yourself" (3). In the latter line, the narrator gestures towards the reader, thus breaking the fourth wall. This narrative vantage complicates the story's unfolding, and infuses the story with another layer of narrative tension. The reader trusts the narrator, because of the intimacy established in this line from the story's first page. The reader also anticipates that the narrator will reveal their identity, and thus scours the story for evidence of who they...