Point of View

The story is written in the past tense and the limited third person from Ernest’s perspective. This adherence to Ernest’s perspective, along with the fact that Ernest is the only consistently present character in the story, gives narrative primacy to Ernest’s personality and values. Ernest himself is, by nature, a humble person, and thus he is unable to articulate and venerate his own virtues. However, the third-person narration is free to do so, and it uses frank and direct terms to describe Ernest’s gentle, kind nature that becomes increasingly profound as Ernest ages. Additionally, the narration uses Ernest’s thoughts to help discredit the idea of each of the other men’s true greatness. Ernest directly observes the flaws of the other men and the ways in which those flaws manifest in the men’s faces.

The story frames the idea...