Reading responses are more casual than essays and you do not need to format in APA (although feel free to practice if you’d like!), but please do write in coherent paragraphs and spellcheck your work though. For this reading response, I want you to write about “Sonny’s Blues” and “Bullet in the Brain” and the literary concept of “Point of View.”
“Sonny’s Blues” is in first person point of view, meaning a character in the story narrates with an “I” pronoun. The narrator only knows what the character would know. “Bullet in the Brain” is in what is called third person omniscient, meaning an unnamed voice from outside the story tells the tale and is able to know everything. (This is what “omniscient” means). These points of view or POVs have different strengths and weaknesses. First person POV allows you to hear the voice of a character, for example, while third person omniscient allows the author to provide details (such as the movement of the bullet) that the character couldn’t know.
In 200 words, discuss how the different POVs affect the stories. Do you prefer one POV to the other? And which story did you enjoy more and why? Use examples and quotes from the texts.