Point of View

There are two distinct points of view in this collection of stories. Several of the stories, including The Rockpile and The Outing, are told in the third person point of view. This point of view stems from the author's point of view, a point of view that includes comments that can come only from the author. These stories give the author some flexibility, the ability to tell the story through many view points and to keep a certain distance between the reader and the characters in order to offer some surprises in the plot. In The Man Child there is also a degree of unreliable narrator, because the child is so young that he does not fully understand what is going on with the adults in his life until the final moments of his own life. Other stories in the collection, such as Sonny's Blues, are...