Point of View

“A Way with Bea” is written from the third person point of view. For the majority of the short story, this third person narrator’s attention and narrative access is limited to the protagonist the Teacher’s vantage point. This means that the ways in which the narrator renders the Teacher’s life, experiences, conflicts, and relationships on the page is immediately dictated by the Teacher’s perception of them. One chief example of this formal dynamic appears within the opening fragment of the short story. When “Bea walks into the classroom wearing the clothes she had on the day before,” the narrator says that the Teacher “understands that this is going to be a bad day” (46). This narrative assertion is not a representation of the narrator’s opinions or interpretations of Bea or the classroom. Rather, the narrative assertion originates from the Teacher’s...