Speaker

The poem “Lemonade” by Raymond Carver has an unnamed speaker who tells the readers the story of Jim Sears and how he lost his only son. 

From the beginning, the speaker reveals their first impression of Jim:

When he came to my house months ago to measure
my walls for bookcases, Jim Sears didn’t look like a man
who’d lose his only child to the high waters
of the Elwha River. He was bushy-haired, confident,
cracking his knuckles, alive with energy, as we
discussed tiers, and brackets, and this oak stain
compared to that.

The unnamed speaker’s role is to merely observe and present the story of how Jim Sears lost his son. The speaker does not get emotionally involved in the events and only asks about Jim “out of small-town courtesy than anything”. 

The s...