The Third Thing That Killed My Father by Raymond Craver - Essay Example

The story was told in the form of a first-person narrative by a character named Jack but his role is limited because he just percepts what had happened in Dummy’s life without going for deeper analysis. So, Dummy’s possessiveness with his stools, his grief over fish’s death and finally murder of his wife and the resultant suicide were all presented in the form of narration by young Jack without any analysis of the characters’ mindset. Even the killing of his wife was handled without in-depth analysis. “Did in his wife with a hammer and drowned himself” (Craver).

Based on the average number of words per sentence in the first three paragraphs of this story, the construction of the sentences, and the vocabulary used, one can easily assume that the intellectual level of the narrator is on the lower side. That is, Jack is a boy, his spoken words or narration was less mature and borders mostly on continuous narration, without scope for analysis.

So, because of this continuous narration without any assessment, the intellectual level of the narration is directly consistent with Jack's apparent inability to analyze and explain the events which he describes in the story. Read More