Narration- A Critical Response

     In Joyce Carol Oates' story Three Girls, the narrator is developed through the first person narration of the story. The setting in which the story takes place is immediately revealed to the reader, though it takes the entirety of the story to properly develop the narrator. The narrator is described as an "NYU girl-poet", meaning a female college student most likely majoring in English, though the reader is able to construct a better picture of the narrator not through the facts that are directly stated, but instead by the heavy use of voice and tone (Oates 77). Because this story is written in the first person, the narrator is able to convey her experiences in a manner that forbids the absence of bias and emotions, as shown by the changing tone as the narrator addresses a new topic or aspect of that "one snowy March early evening in 1956" (Oates 77). Using such phrases as "always on these romantic evenings at the Strand" and prefacing it with "in an agony of unspoken young love I watched you", the reader is able to assume that the narrator is in love with her female friend and therefore lesbian.
     Furthermore, the use of parenthetical interruptions allows the reader to paint a better picture of the narrator. From these interruptions we find that the narrator is "tall for a girl, in 1956", has "male contempt for the merely 'conventional female'", and learns new facts that shed light on the experience with Marilyn Monroe (Oates 78). The information, however many words in which it is relayed, contained in these parentheses allows for a deeper bond between the reader and the narrator; the insight into the narrator's character becomes more refined and complex as the story continues. This information betters the reader's understanding of the events that occur as well, until the final sentence pulls the emotional and tonal range of the story together when the narrator "kiss[es her friend] for the first time" (Oates 83). The lack of dialogue in the story is not a weak point, as the reader can characterize the narrator through the voice, tone, and language of the story.