Narrator and point of view

The short story “The School” by Donald Barthelme is a first-person narrative conveyed by one of the characters, Edgar, who is accounting past events of the year.

The narrator has limited knowledge regarding other characters and the events, and acknowledges this directly, which makes his reliability questionable: “I don’t know what’s true and what’s not. It’s been a strange year.”

The narrator uses a detached, comically morbid tone and limits himself to mostly presenting facts, to which he does not have an answer to: “As soon as I saw the puppy I thought, Oh Christ, I bet it will live for about two weeks and then... And that’s what it did.”

The events are only presented from his point of view, though we also get some insight into the children’s...