payment page
The story is told from a first-person point of view. The narrator, a schoolteacher named Edgar, relates events from his own perspective. Readers know only his thoughts and feelings. Edgar directly addresses the reader or an unknown listener. His language is casual and friendly, but his tone is, for the most part, neutral and emotionless. Initially, his language suggests hesitation and uncertainty. Ellipses imply that he may be thinking of what exactly to say or possibly how to say it. His uncertainty is emphasized by filler words, such as well and you know, as well as repeated statements of I think and I don’t know. These repeated statements also reflect Edgar’s limited reliability as a narrator.
Because readers can only access events through Edgar’s eyes, our understanding of the world within the story is constrained by his limited perspective. For example, in the case of the two students killed on the excavation site, Edgar provides very few facts about the tragedy. He offers information about the names of the deceased students and vague details about the excavation site. He also suggests that large wooden beams might have been haphazardly stacked, and he mentions a pending court case. In the end, though, he states, “I don’t know what’s true and what’s not.” The sense of insecurity expressed in Edgar’s lack of certainty reflects a truth about the human condition more generally: our knowledge of the world is fundamentally limited.
