The short story A Cheater’s Guide to Love, opens with the word ‘your’ establishing the reader as the audience. The use of the second person point of view forms a connection between the main character of the story and the reader. The story is written in the form of a journal with timely recording of the events.

In my opinion, the narrator is not objective as he is hugely influenced by his emotions and feelings throughout the story. The opening paragraph creates a distrusting imagery of the narrator and portrays him as disloyal. Along with this, the serious and pessimistic tone in which the story is narrated makes the reader question the narrator’s reliability. The story is somewhat biased as the reader never learns anything about the situation from any other characters point of view but the narrator. For instance, the story greatly revolves around the narrator’s fiance who can be perceived as cold and heartless due to the lack of a different perspective of their relationship.

Correspondingly, the narrator also has prejudiced perceptions of not only his emotions but also of others. He doesn’t put too much thought or effort into evaluating the situation and the effect it has on people. One of the main instances where I could see the limited perception was when the narrator brought to his friend, Elvis’s attention the actuality of him being the father of the boy. Due to the fact that the narrator was in a similar situation with the girl from Harvard, it can be assumed that it contributed to his discordant reaction.

The narration doesn’t seem to be intended to please the reader, instead to just tell the story or take out the frustration through writing. Some parts of the story may even make the reader feel as though the story was never meant to be read by anyone. The narrator uses his regional language promiscuously throughout the story which once again reveals the narrator’s carefree technique of telling the story.

Lastly, the story ends while giving the reader the freedom to either despair or sympathize with the ‘lying cheater’ as he hangs on to some hope and plans to start over.