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Edgar is an elementary school teacher. As the story’s narrator, he addresses the reader or an unknown listener directly, relating the misfortunes that have befallen his classroom and students. Ellipses early in the story show his hesitancy to speak and his uncertainty at how to explain the situation. Edgar also appears to be weak-willed and ineffective. For example, he follows lesson plans that he knows will end badly. He also allows the children to keep the puppy, despite school rules against it and his sense of certainty about its inevitable death. When the students ask him to make love to his teaching assistant, he eventually acquiesces by kissing her on the brow.
Despite being a teacher, Edgar has few answers to his student’s questions. For example, he guesses that the puppy dies of distemper, but he has no proof. He provides bland cliches to make sense of the year’s misfortunes and tragedies, such as, “I’ve seen better and I’ve seen worse.” When the students ask where plants, animals, and people go after dying, he tells them that he doesn’t know and that nobody knows. When they ask a philosophical question about whether death transcends the banality of everyday existence, he hesitates and struggles to give a decisive response. Edgar is also unable to give his students reassurance about their fears. Although he tells them they should not be frightened, he confesses in an aside to the reader that he is often frightened himself. With his uncertainties and fears, Edgar represents the average person in a confusing, frightening world.
