Who Is Telling 'The Last Seat'?
Mr. Iyer's class reads an original 500-word story, 'The Last Seat.' The narrator follows only Jalen: 'Jalen counted the buses pulling out. He wondered whether Maya would wave. She didn't.' Nowhere does the story report what Maya or the bus driver is thinking, and the word 'I' never appears. Item 4 asks, 'Who is telling the story?' Options: A Jalen, because he is the main character. B A narrator outside the story who knows Jalen's thoughts but not the other characters'. C Maya, because she is described in the story. D A narrator who knows every character's thoughts. Of 24 students, 7 chose A, 15 chose B, and 2 chose D. One student wrote, 'The narrator must be Jalen's friend, since he knows what Jalen is thinking.' Mr. Iyer wants to address this before the district interim, which uses the same item format with a first-person passage.
1. Identify the correct option and lay out the evidence that rules out each distractor.
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The answer is B. The story uses 'he' for Jalen rather than 'I,' so Jalen is not narrating. The narrator reports Jalen's inner life ('he wondered') but never Maya's or the driver's, so the narrator is not omniscient. D fails because an omniscient narrator reports several characters' thoughts, and this one reports exactly one mind. A fails twice: the pronoun check shows 'he,' not 'I,' and a character narrating his own story cannot describe himself from the outside as 'Jalen counted.' C fails because being described is not the same as narrating; Maya never speaks as the teller. The general procedure to teach: check the pronouns first, then ask whose thoughts the teller has access to.
2. Seven students chose A, and one wrote that the narrator is Jalen's friend. Explain the misconception and how to correct it.
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A is tempting because the story's attention stays on Jalen, on his bus count and his worry about Maya, and students often equate 'the person the story is about' with 'the person telling it.' The student who wrote that the narrator is Jalen's friend makes the same move: knowing a character's thoughts feels like being close to him, and closeness feels like a friendship. The distinguishing evidence is both grammatical and informational: the narrator uses third-person pronouns for Jalen, and the narrator can report Jalen's thoughts without ever appearing as a character in the scene. Reteach with a two-question check: Does the teller say 'I'? Whose thoughts can the teller report? Third-person pronouns plus one mind equals a limited outside narrator.
3. How would the item and its answer change if the first line were 'I counted the buses pulling out'? Explain what students should transfer to the district interim.
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With 'I counted the buses pulling out,' the answer would become first person: Jalen would be both character and narrator, and option A would become correct. What changes is not the focus on Jalen but the source of information. A first-person narrator can report only his own thoughts and must guess at other people's, while the current third-person limited narrator can report Jalen's thoughts from outside the scene. That is why the pronoun check must come first, before students decide who the story is about. For the interim, have students annotate pronouns in the margin before answering, and show one first-person paragraph beside one third-person limited paragraph so they see that 'the story is about Jalen' can be true in both while the teller differs.