The urbane style and carefully controlled point of view for which W. Somerset Maugham’s prose is famous is expertly subverted for maximum psychological effect in “An Official Position.” “Rain,” for example, makes use of the viewpoint of a relatively objective secondary character; “The Outstation,” although sympathetic to one of the main characters, relies mostly on a third-person omniscient narrator. “An Official Position,” however, is told almost completely from the point of view of Louis Remire. The reader hears Louis Remire’s story via a third-person narrator almost totally sympathetic to the executioner, and is thus forced to share in the protagonist’s complacency and self-satisfaction.

Both the complacency and the sense of narratorial control break down, however, when the protagonist senses his own impending death. In the darkness of the coconut grove, Louis Remire’s thoughts run amok, and Maugham expertly renders this tortured stream-of-consciousness in one semicoherent two-page paragraph. Only at the end of the story, with Louis Remire’s death, is order restored to the narrative; it is also at this point that Louis Remire’s past catches up with him, as the nameless convict pronounces that justice has finally been done.