Point of View

"A Meeting in the Dark" is written from a free indirect third person point of view. While the narrative arguably belongs to John and follows his experience most closely, the third person narrator also possesses access to the other characters' consciousnesses. At the start of the story, the narrator lives closest to John's psyche, and does not, for example, describe Stanley's feelings or thoughts during their interaction. When Stanley tells John to "Come back," the narrator says that "His heart beat faster and there was that anxious voice within him asking: Does he know" (60)? The narrator gives no attention, however, to either Stanley's internal thoughts or external appearance. Rather, while many of John's lines of dialogue are followed by long narrative passages excavating his interiority, none of Stanley's lines are accompanied by either dialogue tags or descriptive addends.

The free indirect aspect of the narration...