Change of Perspective

Authors note: This is an assigned piece that is supposed to explain how the perspective of a narrator can change the way the reader looks at the events.

In April Morning, there is a fifteen year old boy named Adam who struggles to get along with his father. The story is written in Adam’s point of view.  From this perspective, a lot of events and characters are described in a way that creates a negative feeling towards his father in the reader about the way his father treats him

            One way that Adam’s point of view influences the reader's interpretation is that it makes it sound like his father does nothing but scold him. It makes the reader think that his father always yells at him because he hates him.

            However, the reader would feel a lot differently about the relationship between Adam and his father (Mosses) if the novel was written in the point of view of Mosses. Later in the novel Adam told his mother about how he gets the impression that Mosses hates him. Shortly after that Adam overheard a conversation between his parents. “Well he seems to have gotten the you hate him.’ ‘Hate him!’ my father exploded. ‘Of all the crazy notions! Of all the idiotic ideas! There a boy, my first born son- why, how could any man love a son any more than I love that boy?’”(p.45) This shows that his father does not hate Adam and that the story would’ve obviously sounded different from his father’s point of view.

            As you can see, the point of view of a story forces the reader to see just one side of an event or topic. In April Morning, the narrator's perspective makes the reader see Adam’s father as mean and cruel when that is actually not the case. The point of view will always change from narrator to narrator due to bias.