The Fun They Had

The story is narrated in the third-person limited omniscient (or close third) point of view from the perspective of Margie, an 11-year-old girl. Asimov’s narrative style is a fitting choice given the story’s original publication in a children’s newspaper. The story’s narrator has limited omniscience, making Margie’s perspective inherently unreliable. Given the story’s themes about how technology fails to account for and support human subjectivity, this is also an appropriate choice on the author’s part. Margie’s point of view allows for an exploration of inherently complex questions from a child’s simple perspective, which again meets the story’s thematic reminder to consider the simplest human elements among the lofty, progressive goals of technological advancement. This point of view is crucial in showing how technology must be moderated to ensure that human needs for connection and socialization are still met despite the changes to education and society effected by these technological advancements.

Much of Margie’s conflict is internal (character versus self), expressed through her inner dialogue as she remembers her hatred of school, her frustration and boredom with the