Sunday, June 26, 2011

What point of view is "Sonny's Blues" told from?

The narrator in "Sonny's Blues" is Sonny's brother, and we are told this story from his point of view, in the first person point of view.  We know that something is in the first person point of view when the narrator is using "I" to tell the story, and in fact, "I" is the very first word in the story.  What this means is that we are getting the story from the brother's perspective, not from Sonny's perspective. That might make for a very different kind of story.  But the brother is not completely lacking in objectivity because as the story goes on, we see that he has regrets about how he has regarded and treated Sonny over the years, being a judgmental and neglectful brother to him. We see his growth as a person, really, such that by the time the story ends, he has developed some empathy and a great deal more love and appreciation for his brother.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What was the device called which Faber had given Montag in order to communicate with him?

In Part Two "The Sieve and the Sand" of the novel Fahrenheit 451, Montag travels to Faber's house trying to find meaning in th...