Narrator and point of view

The short story “Hemi’s Gift” by TJ Corrigan is told from the point of view of a first-person narrator. 

The narrator is also the main character of the story and remains unnamed throughout the entire length of the short story. Her gender remains ambiguous for the first half of the story and only becomes apparent once Hemi refers to her as “girl” (ll. 95).

First-person narration means the events of the story are seen from the narrator’s point of view and influenced by her experience and judgments. Because of this, we do not have insight into what the other characters think or feel, and sometimes the narrator’s observations or impressions about them can be biased. An example of this is illustrated in the way the narrator first sees Hemi as someone who is unaware of or unwilling to follow p...