Point Of View In Richard Wright's Big Black Good Man

The point of view of a story could make or break it. In Richard Wrights short story “Big Black Good Man” the point of view makes the stories ending very surprising. In this essay I will explain what point of view Richard Wright wrote his story from, by using textual evidence, to get a better understanding of how important point of view is in all stories.

In the beginning of the story some may think that this story is being told from the point of view of a minor character or even the main character Olaf Jenson, but this is wrong. This story is told from an outside narrator. We know this because the narrator talks in 3rd person and quotes every character when they talk. The narrator uses “He” and “They” throughout the whole story. For instance,

when the student greets Olaf it says ““Good evening” the student says” (319). This shows that it is an outside narrator as the narrator uses “he” and never uses an “I” so the narrator never puts its own thoughts in the story. Since it is an outside narrator it could either an Omniscient, Limited Omniscient or an Objective narrator.
The type of outside narrator this story is told by is a limited omniscient.

Limited omniscient is the where the outside narrator knows what one character is feeling and thinking this usually with the main character. This is shown within this story many times as we know what Olaf is thinking and feeling but we don’t know what everyone else is. For example, in the first sentence of the story it states, “Olaf Jenson could smell the sea and hear the occasional foghorn of a freighter” (318). This supports the claim that the narrator is limited omniscience because the narrator knows what is going on in Olaf’s head. Another example, is when the big black man wrapped his hands around Olaf’s neck we knew what Olaf was thinking as he was terrified and even peed his pants but all we knew about the black man was that he was grinning (324). This is very important because Olaf asks the man “Please don’t hurt me” the man replies, “I wouldn’t hurt you boy” (324). This shows how the narrator is limited because we don’t know what the black mans intentions are, but we do know Olaf is terrified. Later in the end of the story we know what the black man’s true intentions were, he only wanted to measure Olaf’s neck size. He brought Olaf 6 nylon shirts as present to him for letting him stay at the hotel. He didn’t mean any harm after

all.
The point of view of this story is an advantage because it creates a great amount of suspense when the man returns. If this story had a different point of view it would not be as good as this point of view. For example, if the outside narrator was not limited and was just omniscient we would know what the black mans intentions are the whole story and there would be no surprise at the end. Or if it was written in first person every character would have their own bias of the situation and the story wouldn’t be as developed as it was. Overall, Richard Wrights short story “Big Black Good Man” shows the importance of point of view in any story.