Narrator and point of view

The narrator of the short story “Call If You Need Me” by Raymond Carver is Dan, who is also the protagonist. As with every first-person narrator, we must focus on his reliability, as first-person narrators often tend to be biased and unreliable in their rendering of the events. In our case, however, the first-person narrator appears to be relatively objective and presents different aspects of his relationship equally: his own thoughts, Susan’s opinion, Richard’s desire to see his parents back together, and Nancy’s arguments for getting a divorce.

Dan’s knowledge of the events is limited to what he experiences first-hand. He only knows what Nancy lets him know and does not find about her intentions of separating until the end when Nancy tells him:

But that night, after we'd eaten dinner and washed the dishes and I had laid a fire in the fireplace,...