The Narrator In The Short Story

The short story is told in a first-person narrative form, where the narrator is also the story’s main character. The use of a first-person narrator gives the reader full access to the protagonist’s thoughts, emotions and feelings, however, because we’re dealing with a first-person narrator we don’t hear the story from other perspectives than the protagonist’s, which makes it a limited point of view. The limited point of view and the fact that the narrator might be lying or manipulating her own memories, intentionally or not, makes the first-person narrator a narrative form which can debatably be defined as unreliable. Another effect of using a first-person narrator is that the reader is capable of identifying oneself with the main character

She has recently lost her father and is now the only living member of her decreased family. In former times, both of her parents we’re alive and so was her three years younger brother, Robbie. Robbie wasn’t exactly the son his father had wanted; he was a drunk and didn’t mind the words that uttered his mouth. But it doesn’t justify his terribly death, that hit the remaining family hard, especially the family’s mother who barely spoke in the following six months. Robbie was brutally murdered the day he failed his driver’s test at the age of only seventeen. The mother dropped dead on the kitchen floor for no obvious reason six months after Robbie’s death. In accordance with Annie’s father, the mother’s death was owing to the fact that “her heart never mended” (P. 4, l.

The fact that Annie isn’t shocked by seeing the ghosts of her family members makes the reader wonder if the supernatural does exist. In the very first sentence and in several others it is clearly shown how natural she acts when her deceased relatives occurs to her: “The first time I saw my father after he died, I was in the shower” (P. 1, l. 1), “The next time I saw him, I was on the train” (P. 1 l. 26), “The next time I saw my father after he died, it was night and I was driving” (P. 4, l. 129). We are raised with the believe that ghosts are not real, however, “No Angel” challenges the reader to think of a reasonable explanation to Annie’s story which many will have their difficulties to do so – the reader can’t explain the unexplainable. Therefore we are drawn to the conclusion which involves the supernatural element in some way or