Narrator and point of view

The short story “The Splinter” by Ron Carlson is a first-person account of past events. The narrator is an active character in the story, the father of a boy named Rick. The fact that he is unnamed draws the readers’ attention to his role as a single father.

While the events are told in retrospect, the narrator does not give readers any hints about how the story is going to end. Still, he suggests that he knows more than he tells us: “I can’t say which way we went. Damon said not to tell.” (l. 3)

The account is also subjective, as the narrator hints that he might have a bad opinion of Damon, for example: “It’s like being rich, he says, which he doesn’t understand is a mute comparison, because he is rich” (l. 5). Still, the narrator comes across as reliable overall, a...