Narrator and point of view

The short story “One More Thing” by Raymond Carver is narrated in the past tense by an unknown third-person narrator. The dialogue, however, is in the present tense.

The narrator is reliable, because he appears to give an impartial account of the characters’ feelings and their actions. His credibility is not compromised in any way.

The narrator is mainly objective. This is because the narration mostly conveys the exact facts of the story. He recounts the character’s actions but does not interpret them, and he rarely describes the character’s state of mind. 

Insights into the characters’ emotions or thoughts are rarely described directly. One instance is the line “He thought he might have her there” (p. 9, l. 27). Another is at the end on the story, when L.D.’s conflicting emotions are shown ...