Point of View

The point of view is complex in that the stories are told to the narrator who presumably writes them down. The reader is told that Tevye meets Sholem Aleichem in his travels and Sholem Aleichem is the author who writes these stories down. This is also true in the case of the Railroad Stories. However, the reader quickly forgets the narrator, as the stories read as first-person accounts from Tevye the Dairyman. The reader only knows Tevye's inner thoughts and not those of Golde or of Tevye's daughters. Tevye is the somewhat confused but philosophical dairyman who tries to understand the world by comparing his situation to quotations from the Bible and other Holy Books that he knows. He is optimistic because he believes in God's justice but realistic in that he realizes that certain things are fated and unavoidable.

In the Railroad Stories, the point...