Narrator and point of view

The short story “Son of Satan” by Charles Bukowski is told from the first-person point of view of the unnamed narrator who is the main character of the story. He is subjective but not unreliable. 

The other characters are seen through the narrator’s eyes, and their descriptions are influenced by the narrator’s feelings about them. For instance, the narrator’s fear of his father makes him see everything about him as larger than life. In his descriptions of his father, the word “big” predominates (p. 44, ll. 1-6; l. 29, p. 45, l. 9).

The narrator is insightful at times. For example, he seems to know the real reason why they picked on Simpson: “Simpson had always been a loner. Probably lonely. He never mixed with us other guys. He was strange that way. Maybe that’s what bothered us about him.” (p. 43, ll. 22-24)

The narration is mainly explicit, describing the events as they take place, o...