Point of View

Throughout Horse, Brooks switches between a variety of perspectives—including, among others, Jarret Lewis, Theo, Jess, Martha Jackson, and Thomas J. Scott—to create a sense of both narrative and thematic entanglement. Although many of these characters live in vastly different time periods in American history, their voices blend, intermingle, and sometimes even harmonize over the course of the novel. In this way, Brooks emphasizes the entwinement of these characters. They become, in a literal sense, part of the same story; this choice foregrounds the way in which history continually affects, and sometimes erupts into, the present. By placing the voices of these disparate characters alongside one another, Brooks also draws attention to the thematic similarities between them. Despite the hundred and fifty years that divides them, both Jarret and Theo, as Black men, grapple with the fraught complexities of race in the United States...