Narrator and point of view

The short story “Hall of Small Mammals” by Thomas Pierce is told from the first-person point of view of the unnamed narrator. The narrator is one of the main characters, and the events and the rest of the characters are generally seen through his eyes.

The narrator’s perspective of other characters is somewhat biased because of his personality. For instance, his own superficial nature makes it difficult for him to understand people who invest a lot of time and energy into something they value. This applies to both Val’s mother, who reportedly once spent hours super-gluing a lamp together with “Zen-like concentration” (l. 231) and bored the narrator enough to turn on the television, as well as to Val, since the narrator considers Val's interests in the Pippin monkeys an "obsession" (l. 186). There are times when the narrator tries to guess what others are thinking and feeling, for instance: “Val was about to say something—something offensive,...