Narrator and point of view

“The Whaler” by Joe Sheerin is a short story told by a first-person narrator, who is also the main character. The story is mainly written in the past tense, which suggests that the events the boy depicts have already happened. However, we do not know how much time has passed between the boy’s encounter with the Whaler and his narration of the story, so we cannot say for sure whether the narrator is an adult, a teenager, or still a child.

As a first-person narrator, the boy has limited knowledge about what is going to happen and he presents the events chronologically, as he experiences them. For example, the following quotation reveals the boy’s shame upon realising that the Whaler is defecating on the field:

As I reached a point within some y…