Characters

Safia Moore’s short story “That Summer” is told in retrospect by a first-person narrator, and it features several characters.

The narrator of the story is also the main character, and the plot follows both his younger self and his current perspective on the events. 

Apart from the narrator, the story includes secondary characters such as his childhood friends, Noel and Ivan, Mrs Walsh and her family, Mrs Walsh’s brother, the mothers of the two children who went missing, and the collective character of the people in town. These characters are important for the way the narrator relates to them and for their relationships which set the social setting and some of the tension and conflicts in the story.

You can read the characterisation of the narrator and a discussion on the relationship between the characters in the following pages.