Point of View

The novel is written in the third person and the point of view is that of the main character in the story, Alfred Brooks. Alfred is a black, 17-year-old boy living in Harlem in the mid-1960s who is struggling to make sense of his own life and the changes that are taking place in the world around him. Alfred is the main character in every scene in the novel, and all of the action and events in the story are presented as they are seen, experienced, and understood by him. In addition to the third person narration there are also a number of short passages – usually ranging from just a couple of words to three or four short sentences at a time – which express Alfred’s thoughts and feelings in the first person, as they are going on in Alfred’s mind. These are...