Content Warning: This section of the guide references the source text’s description of animal cruelty.

Paul, the protagonist and first-person narrator of the story, recalls his childhood from the vantage point of adulthood. The child Paul is 13 years old, and the firstborn son of Oliver Milliron. He is academically precocious to the point that his teacher allows him to skip the school spelling bee because no one else approaches his proficiency. Paul worries a lot about his family and others he loves and for whom he feels responsible. His anxiety expresses itself in his troubled dreams that are so frequent that he knows, after a bad experience, what will appear in his sleep. He remembers these dreams in detail after he wakes.

In the frame narrative set in 1957, Paul is 61. He serves in the statewide position of Superintendent of Public Instruction and describes himself as a wily civil servant who struggles against the regressive work of those laypeople on the committee who control the appropriations for public schools in Montana. Paul faces the distasteful prospect of having to close the remaining small schools in Montana.

Morrie captures much of Paul’s identity when he describes him as “the oldest 13-year-old in captivity” (335).