The narrator in this story by Edward P. Jones believes that he has a story to tell when his mother, Aunt Penny, and Miss Agatha come to visit him to ask that he investigate the murder of Miss Agatha’s son, Ike. The first two sentences of this story set this whole narrative in motion and provides insight into the intentions of the narrator to leave Washington, his previous service in the Korean War, and pulls reader into an inevitable murder mystery. It is obvious from the beginning of the narration that the main character has gone through quite a lot of traumatic events, but none of them so scarring to him as the death of the white woman at the train station, despite all his time in the Korean War. I think the narrator does imagine having an audience to tell his story to, because he is a very self-centered individual that internalizes everything that happens to him on an extreme level. When they are telling this story, the narrator is recounting these events as though they happened a long time ago, and he has since moved on from this memory. We discover the narrators’ perspective right at the beginning of the story, but some aspects of his character are not evident until we observe his interactions with other characters in the story. These characters are all particularly women, and the way the narrator treats them demonstrates how he has no concept of women with multi-faceted lifestyles and personalities, capable of complex thoughts and emotions. He is thoroughly lacking in knowledge in this area, which leads the duration of this investigation of Ike’s death to take many weeks longer than it should have. Upon first meeting with the three women that came to ask for his help, he says, “My mother came around me. I knew she had been behind me, taking the measure of me and the room, finding something that she could use against me” (pg 3). This sentence clashes with the situation that actually unfolded, which demonstrates how unreliable the narrator is in this story. He does not understand women and their thoughts or feelings at all, and if he had then this murder case would have been solved in a few short days.
There is a big difference between what the narrator thinks the story is about, and what the story is about in actuality. The narrator believes that the story is about his desire to get to Alaska and start a new life, and how his plans got quashed by this murder mystery. The narrator believes that this story is also entirely about himself, and he does not view any other female character in the story as relevant unless they are somehow connected to him. I think the story is actually a demonstration of how narrow-minded the narrator truly is, and is more about his realization that there is a lot more than meets the eye with everyone he comes into contact with. This is a revelation story for the narrator, and by solving this case his eyes are opened into a broader perspective than he had at the beginning of the story. This is very unique to this story, because in many other stories that have been read throughout the course of this class, the narrator believes that they have had a revelation but in actuality they are still no better off than they started out. However, in this case the narrator has begun to change for the better at least a little bit, and readers get to witness his realizations. Before this happens though, the narrator is thrown into some situations that are hard for him to understand. Over and over again throughout this narration, the main character constantly is changing his plans to try to avoid Sheila Larkin, his ex-girlfriend. He goes out of his way to do something differently to stay away from her because he believes that she is super upset with him for breaking ties with her, and will want to beat him up. He says, “Afraid I would see Sheila Larkin, I took the long way- down Fourth Street, then along New York Avenue to Sixth Street. Afraid of lye in my face. I felt bad about her, but she wasn’t in my future” (pg 9). The narrator is so thoroughly convinced that Sheila hasn’t moved on that he is terrified of the consequences of his own actions towards her. However, when faced with Sheila and her friend passing by him on the street he feels like a ghost, because she didn’t even give him a second glance as they walked by. This is what I think started the revelation in our narrator, and solving the murder case solidified it even further. It would have been impossible for him to come to any conclusion about who killed Ike if he hadn’t been able to open his mind up at least a little bit to the possibility that there was more to Alona, her child, and their situation than the child being an annoyance and Alona just there to hold the baby. In the end, the narrator comes to realize that there are actually other people with complex, complicated lives in the world besides himself. This story serves as a valuable memory for the narrator, and his retelling of these events brings to light many important points on his perspective through it all.