Narrator and point of view

In the short story “The Tree of War” by Tanya Datta, the main character is also the story’s narrator. As with every first-person narrator, it is a good idea to focus on Krishna’s reliability. First-person narrators tend to be biased and subjective; furthermore, Krishna is only a child, so he may not have a deep understanding of the conflict between his parents. Consequently, he may portray his father negatively because of the man’s absence and because of his bias:

Help them stay together so we can carry on living like this? He must be joking. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, it’d be no use. Because I’ve cracked why my mum won’t buy him milk, see. But my father doesn’t get it. (ll. 143-146)

Krishna also has a limited point of view. He does ...