Narrator and point of view

The short story “Chickamauga” by Ambrose Bierce is a third-person narrative told from the perspective of the little boy. The narrator adopts the perspective of the boy from the start: “Advancing from the bank of the creek he suddenly found himself confronted with a new and more formidable enemy: in the path that he was following, sat, bolt upright, with ears erect and paws suspended before it, a rabbit!”

Still, we must note the fact that the narrator does not always depend on the perspective of the boy when he renders the story. For instance, the fragment above is rendered by the narrator exactly as the boy sees the strange-looking rabbit. Even the exclamation mark suggests that it is the boy himself who sees the rabbit and is afraid of him.

An instance i...