Point of View

The omniscient third-person narrator of “A Nurse’s Story” is free to take on the perspective of any character, regardless of the time or place in which that character lives. The narrator is god-like in his ability to look into the mind of every character and to communicate to readers private motivations, desires, and thoughts. Readers discover, for instance, that Warren Booth Jr. still harbors deep resentment because of the strike’s negative impact on his family and on his own preparation for an important football game. Moreover, the narrator is free to articulate and, even comment on, the limitations of Warren’s own understanding of past events and of himself, as when the narrator notes that “[t]he fact that [Warren] himself has never managed any great enterprise did not occur to him” or later when he debates...