Point of View

In "Errand" Carver employs an omniscient narrator who, in word choice, tone, and perspective, embodies the voice of a historian. An omniscient narrator has access to the thoughts and actions of all the characters in a story and hovers, godlike, over the story. Historians use this point of view to create an objective, truthful representation of events. They reveal information to the reader that characters do not yet know. Carver uses this point of view to effect an authoritative tone, as well as to allow himself artistic license with this point of view later in the story when he imagines the scene between Olga Knipper and the young man. By incorporating so much historical information, in the form of diary entries and quotations from memoirs and biographies, Carver effectively questions the boundaries between what makes an essay and what makes a short story.

Realism

"Errand" contains...