Narrator and point of view

The short story “Born of Man and Woman” by Richard Matheson is told by a first-person narrator, who is also the main character. The first-person narrator is an eight-year-old child of undisclosed gender, who is locked up in the cellar because of its deformity. The narration is presented in the form of several journal entries, marked with “X”s. 

The narrator provides information related to the way it is treated by its parents and makes readers sympathize with it. For instance, when the narrator says “That hurts. I hurt” (p. 184, ll. 40-41), readers tend to sympathize with it and feel pity for the way its parents treat the narrator. It is only at the end that the narrator reveals that it could be identified as a monster and that it might have committed violence before. This is one example of the narrator’s unreliability, as it do...