The Speaker

The unnamed third-person speaker of “Casabianca” demonstrates vast knowledge of the details surrounding the death of Giocante and his father. Therefore, she retains a high degree of omniscience that is frequently typical of the narrators of epics – they are often know in close detail the events happening before them as well as the emotions of the characters partaking in the action. Additionally, despite the speaker’s third-person perspective, she does not remain completely emotionally uninvolved in the violence and destruction taking place before her. In some ways, she reacts like an audience member watching Giocante operating amid warfare. She, not unlike an audience member, expresses a laudatory attitude toward the boy’s “proud, though childlike form” and, later on, “brave despair” (8, 24). At the moment of the boy’s demise, the speaker is similarly emotive as feelings of horror wash over her: she exclaims, “The boy – oh! where...