What struck me the most about this story is the voice Barthelme used. Edgar speaks as the mouthpiece of the adult world observing children's experience of life and death. He relays the facts of what happened, why he thought it happened, and what he thought about it without acknowledging or including the children's feelings and reactions to the deaths. This is Barthelme displaying the way adults sometimes view children as tiny humans with less intense feelings. When The children's voice does manage to get through, it becomes apparent that they are affected by all of this death and they have questions about the world that adults never seem to want to answer fully. They don't speak the way children normally do though, so Edgar can't edge around it they way adult often do. Barthelme uses him as the voice of adulthood who knows no more about death than the children do and very little more about love. The next gerbil that walks into the classroom only functions as a distraction from the deeper questions the children have. They will grow up to have no better answers to give their children than Edgar could give them.
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