Narrator and point of view

The short story “The Dutiful Daughter” by Saadat Hasan Manto has two first-person narrators. In the outer story, the first-person narrator is an unnamed man, possible of Pakistani origins given his conversation with the liaison officer from Pakistan.

In the inner story, the first-person account remains, but the narrator changes, as the first narrator uses direct speech to report a story told to him by the liaison officer. The liaison officer then adopts the role of the narrator, telling a story about an old Pakistani woman looking for her daughter. 

Throughout the story, the narration is mostly explicit, with the ideas and the events being presented clearly: “There wasn’t enough food to go round and basic facilities were almost non-existent. Epidemics and infections were comm...