Narrator and point of view

The short story “Scary Movies” by Stephen Amidon is told in retrospect by a first-person narrator. The presence of the narrator is marked by the personal pronoun “I”, which is frequently repeated throughout the text. The interesting element you should note here is that the narrator is no longer a child at the time of the narration; the narrator is obviously an adult, but he confines himself to the point of view he had when he was a child: “I was nine years old when I discovered the Roxy Theatre and learned something about fear” (ll. 1-2).

Although the adult narrator knows the outcome of the events he lived as a child, he presents them from an innocent perspective. This is why we can say that the narrator has a limited point of view. For example, the following extract shows the sudden awe and admiration of the boys upon walking in the Roxy Theatre for the first time, not knowing what they were about to see:...