First-Person Fiction

I think the narrator of this story was obviously looking for love and validation, but I’m not sure if she found it by the end. My initial reaction to the ending of the story was that she found love with the magician because he accepted her. However, I think of the title of the story. […]

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The narrative of this story gets set in motion when the narrator is offered a job position as a “surrogate vice president” of a company called Value Enterprise Association, run by Tao Ling and Gigi, the operations manager. The job position is one that allows the narrator to be the face of the company, regardless […]

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The narrator in “The Surrogate” is a lonely, insecure person who is in pain all the time from a medical condition. To make herself more noticeable, she agrees to be the surrogate vice president of a company run by a man named Lao Ting. Her job was to basically pose and get American businessmen to […]

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This story seemed to be a love story in a way. The narrator probably didn’t realize it, but I think he needed a better mother figure in his life and this came about through Mrs. Honigbaum. Their relationship was something he needed in order to feel valid. He didn’t see that much success within his […]

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The narrator of this short story was a naïve guy living in LA hoping to make something of himself as an actor and “Nothing Ever Happens Here” is a collection of acting mishaps, some flashbacks to whenever he was living at home with his mother, but mostly it was his interactions with his landlady, Mrs. […]

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The narrators of both these stories are, quite bluntly, complete idiots. It is surprising that both of them admit to it at the end of each story. We’ve read in Ottessa’s previous stories of the idiocy of several of her characters, but none of them ever admitted to it. The two male characters in these […]

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We have read of many ugly characters in Ottessa’s collection, but the narrator of this story takes that ugliness one step further. We have a clear understanding of the narrator’s character—she feels herself to be superior to the residents in Alna, and she hates her current work life. She also craves the drugs or “my […]

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“Dancing in the Moonlight” was a story about a man, Nick, going through the holidays in the name of love and resulting with less than he started in love and material items. Nick told this story, likely out of many reasons, but I think the most prevalent may be guilt since it was very likely that […]

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This story was written about a man that lost his wife and chose to work in a place for adults with disabilities. He seemed to want to tell this story as a confession about how he saw his wife. He talks about how he didn’t miss her when she died and how he felt better […]

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From reading the story, one can tell that the narrator, Larry, is lonely. He takes up work at an adult residential facility for adults with moderate developmental disabilities. This way, he can be around people and feel like an important and superior person. He lives alone and has not dated anyone since his wife died. […]

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There is a lot more to this story than there may seem at first glance, and I really enjoyed the small complexities that could be found within if you looked at it a bit closer than face value. The narrator believes that this story is merely her recollection of the things she enjoys about the […]

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Ottessa Moshfegh dose a brilliant job of combining both repulsion and intrigue through her character development. In this short story she seems to capture the apparition of a mans true innermost nature.The main character, and our narrator, seems to have an overzealous ego as he practically drowns the text in his own self worship.He uses […]

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Much like most of the other narrators for these stories, the narrator of this one has a dry and judgmental personality. There’s this certain hyperfixation that he has with playing roles or noticing the roles that the people around him had. There’s his brother, MJ, being the “man’s man.” Then there’s him being “refined” as […]

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This short story follows a self-destructive woman who teaches math at a Catholic school despite the fact that she a) doesn’t really know math well enough to teach it and b) has to doctor the answers on the tests her students hand in to hide her failures in teaching and keep herself employed. She holds […]

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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 […]

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This book by Kazuo Ishiguro is a fascinating read, mainly due to its portrayal of deep and complex emotion through a narrator that has no clue how to begin to comprehend such ideas. Stevens, a butler who has served at the Darlington Estate for many years, is writing this book as a sort of diary […]

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The title itself sparks curiosity and hints at the events in the story. In the Old Testament, Hagar was a slave and the founder of Arabs—dark skinned people—who was cast out of the kingdom. Therefore, this story involves her children and all that happens to them. While it is normal to read a short story […]

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Mr. Stevens, being the first-person narrator of this novel, is naturally unreliable; this is exacerbated by the fact that he fails to recognize his own emotions. His emotional state is not completely absent, however, though we are only told about it because another character mentions it to Mr. Stevens. Mr. Stevens is unable to comprehend […]

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I believe the reason that made the narrator tell her story about her boyfriend and the new neighbors coming in was the new neighbors (hence “The Weirdos”) but also, to some degree, her boyfriend’s weirdness, which he may also be tied into those she found weird. The narrator seemed to be either thinking or writing with no […]

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I think the narrator of Malibu began his story because he needed someone to talk to about his eating disorder. He was very judgmental of other people, but he was also very insecure of himself. He continuously brought up the fact that he would purge after every meal and he never talked to anyone about […]

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