Much of the narrative of A Death in the Family is told from the point of view of children, and primarily through the eyes of Rufus. Agee uses childhood as a lens through which to perceive reality; a child's lack of guile is the best narrative avenue to present many of life's complications, as such presentation allows us to draw our own inferences. Children typify the questioning stance that every character in the novel must eventually embrace when faced with Jay's death.
When we first see Rufus, he is his father's silent companion on a trip to see a Charlie Chaplin film. After the film, we see Rufus's deep love for and insight about his father. The narrator tells us that Rufus perceives that his father loves the silent companionship of their walks home as much as Rufus does, and also that his father needs to spend this time alone, away from the home, because it restores an inner peace he cannot otherwise gain. Rufus clearly adores his father and wishes he could make his father prouder by being a better fighter instead of being good at reading. These two differing feelings—the desire to please and the insight about his father's emotions—are characteristic of Agee's depiction of childhood throughout the novel: at times, Rufus seems very young; at other times, wise beyond his years.
The italicized flashbacks throughout the novel represent memories from Rufus's childhood, each displaying an event that shaped his development. It is hard to say what exactly Agee would have done with these sections had he lived long enough to work them into the body of his novel. Nonetheless, it is clear that childhood, and all that Rufus thought and felt at that time of his life, is vital to the shaping of the novel as a whole.
In the chapters when they've learned of Jay's death, although Rufus and little Catherine are not present, childish, difficult behavior remains, as we see when Joel he questions the presence of Jay's ghost. At this point, the perspective of children and that of adults appears to intersect, which demonstrates to us that reality is not as clear-cut as it seemed before Jay died. In a time of loss, neither adults nor children have all the answers. Earlier in the novel, Agee speaks of childhood as though it were a sort of sham contrived by adults; now he shows why this is true. There are times in life when everyone feels helpless, regardless of age. In a sense, all the adults in Part Two of the novel are like children in that they must wait, unknowing and unprepared, for what is to come.
Unlike children, though, the adults can fall back on the fact that they have dealt with difficult experiences in the past: Joel has his pessimistic fatalism; Andrew has his agnosticism, Hannah and Mary have their differing levels of religious conviction—the former a sturdy, tried-and-true stoicism, the latter a passionate and slightly overwrought righteousness. Undoubtedly each character gains some solace for beliefs that are reaffirming in the face of devastation. But Agee does not grant any single one of these views any particular authority. The repeated voicing of the different opinions eventually reduces them to a collection of notions that are inconclusive and unsatisfying to all involved.
Agee shows again that childhood is merely a construct by demonstrating that in extreme old age, humans are once again like infants. Agee suggests this idea starting with the curious line in the first section of italics in the novel: "so successfully disguised to myself as a child." The rest of the narrative supports the idea that children observe and experience life at least as accurately as—if not more accurately than—adults do. Agee repeatedly uses a child's perspective to relate events because a child's reaction is not shaped by the prejudices that characterize older people—a child is a clear mirror of existence as it occurs moment to moment. In the instance of meeting his great- great-grandmother, Rufus is the most effective narrator to use to describe the scene, as his reaction reflects the true ambiguity of the situation and highlights the poignancy of the possibility that he is, in a sense, more mature than the old woman.
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