First-Person Fiction

In this story, we learn about Josh’s summer days on the beach as a lifeguard. We find out that he has huge self-esteem about his body and his role on the beach. He constantly has girls at his chair trying to get his attention and offering food to him. He loves it so much that […]

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I found that the relation between the story’s title and the story itself to be a little ironic. This is because the narrator continuously makes poor decisions (drug/alcohol abuse, changing test scores, etc.) However, at the end, she quits her job at the school. Could this be a form of bettering herself? She says that […]

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All Aunt Hagar’s Children gives a brilliant portrayal of how a person’s past can majorly influence their mental health and understanding of the world around them. You can see this sort of subjective mental weight in our main character, a Korean war veteran who had just returned home from deployment. We first see this character […]

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Edward P. Jones has a very interesting writing style. To me it feels as if he is able to find every perfect word and put them together to create something so engaging. However, I say this when I did not even enjoy this story, not until almost the end. This story occurred in a span […]

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“All Aunt Hagar’s Children” is about an alcoholic young black man in the 1950’s trying to solve the murder of his cousin, Ike while dealing with the aftermath of his service in the Korean War.  He takes on the case at the request of his family, even though it is the last thing he wants […]

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Throughout this story, the narrator seems fairly detached while still being hyperaware about certain things like smells and how people look.  This is especially the case with how he looks.  He also suffers from bulimia based on some of the behaviors he expresses, the main one being purging and avoidance of food, while also always seeing […]

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Moshfegh does an amazing job in shaping the narrator’s voice in “Malibu”. She creates a character that is so tangible and interesting and feels like a real person. At his core, this character is insecure; that is incredibly obvious. He hates the body that he’s living in. He suffers from bulimia and low self-esteem. He […]

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In “All Aunt Hagar’s Children” the narrator starts off alone in his office thinking about the only women he has ever seen die. He states that he can’t keep her last words out of his head. He was in the military and had seen a lot of men die, but for some reason seeing a […]

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When the main character is at Miss Minnie’s house, the woman explains that the night of Ike’s murder, she didn’t hear anything. But when Miss Agatha got home, she and Alona started screaming. This was one of the first clues to the murderer’s identity, but not one that the POV character was able to pick […]

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The narrator tells us this story about a murder mystery as it is fresh in his mind and he’s not very removed from it. If I had to guess, he’d only been finished with the actions for about a week before he decided to speak. Why? Who knows. It feels like the narrator has a […]

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When reading Moshfegh’s the Weirdos, one must prepare for some pretty off-the-wall habits from the characters. Then throw all that prep out the window.  The Weirdos gives a glance into the life of a woman who is in a relationship with a very strange man. On the very first page, things take a sharp turn […]

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The narrator told this story because he had returned from war and while he was with his family had decided to go to Alaska to find gold and have a change in life. Before he could even decide when to go, Miss Agatha requested that he, far from a detective, find who killed her son, […]

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The book  Theremains of the day presents Stevens as a narrator who has little to no interest in having options about anything other than his job. This can make him boring to readers and can often lead to feelings of frustration while reading. While this might be annoying it was done purposefully on the author’s […]

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The best way that I could describe this short story is with one word: bitter. But, to expand on that, it’s a monotonous bitterness. There’s this repetitious element to it that the narrator, Miss Mooney, seems absolutely disgusted with. The irony of the title I doubt was lost on anyone, she was (is) an alcoholic who drowned […]

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The Remains of the Day follows along in the life of Stevens, a butler who prides himself in having dignity. It is interesting how many variations of dignity Ishiguro managed to include within the story itself from different people of class. There were even disagreements between the butlers themselves on what it meant to have […]

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This story follows the narrator, a butler by the name of Stevens, who travels to visit a friend while reflecting on his time working in Darlington Hall.  He talks about and reflects on experiences within the hall, interactions with various people within it, as well as contemplating the idea of what makes a “great” butler. […]

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Throughout Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel,  The Remains of the Day, he uses the main character’s point of view to show how past events have affected him. The language Stevens’ uses, what he talks about, and most importantly, what he doesn’t talk about leads readers to understand his character more in-depth. In addition, everything Stevens experiences is told […]

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One of the most interesting aspects of the novel was that of the relationship between Stevens and his father. Not only are their stories strikingly similar, but so are their personalities and the revelations that they have later on in life. Stevens is unwilling to admit his own faults, but maybe “faults” is too tough […]

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The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro is about a butler named Mr. Stevens who is taking a holiday from his place of residence/work known as Darlington Hall. During his journey, he has the intention of meeting up with a former housekeeper named Miss Kenton who left in 1936 though they still kept in contact […]

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The narrator of this story is in his 40’s looking back at his teenage years. I think he wrote this story because of his mother. At the end of the story, he says, “And how old was I then? Sixteen. Sixteen is young, but it can also be a grown man. I am forty-one years […]

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