The story is told by a nameless first-person narrator who is observing events from a distance. The narrator views the children’s deeply serious play through the experienced eye of an adult, a position that reinforces his isolation, banishing him from the charmed circle of the children but allowing him to notice and understand what they do not. This position makes him uniquely suited to illustrate the tragic aspects of Coming of Age. When two of these children, selecting each other from among the crowd, move together across the threshold into adolescence, the narrator stands far enough on the other side of this threshold to understand what the moment means and what disappointments will likely follow it. The narrator gives the scene its meaning, but the children do not notice him at all, and from their point of view, he does not even exist. Given how much of the children’s energy is spent in forging identities for themselves out of art and romance, the narrator’s namelessness reads as a tragic consequence of his long immersion in the adult world.

The setting supports the nostalgic

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