Have you ever gotten into an argument with a sibling, and when your parents ask who started it, you each point a finger at the other? The truth is, you both may be right! Perhaps you remember someone barging rudely into your room, invading your privacy . . . while your sibling remembers peeking in the door to say hello—and being greeted with angry shouts. If your parents are the sort to avoid taking a side, and expect you to work out such misunderstandings together, you may have to slip into your sibling’s shoes for a second and try to see the situation from his or her perspective.
When you’re reading a novel, it’s important to stop and consider, now and then, whose perspective the story represents. Cassie is the narrator in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, so the story’s events are described as she would see and understand them. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore the perspectives of other characters. Sometimes their experiences and the way they respond to them are just as important as the narrator’s.
Remember the incident in Strawberry in Mr. Barnett’s store? Every time someone entered his store or asked for help, Mr. Barnett stopped filling the Logans’ grocery order to wait on the other person instead. He even stopped to help a young girl who—like Cassie—wasn’t there with her parents.
What was each character in that scene thinking and feeling? Answer these questions yourself for each of the characters below. Then click the character’s name to compare your thoughts to ours.
Cassie assumed that Mr. Barnett had simply forgotten about their items. Therefore, she walked over, tapped Mr. Barnett’s arm, and politely reminded him that he hadn’t finished their order yet even though they had been in the store for more than an hour.
T.J. didn’t seem to mind the wait. In fact, he expected it. He told Cassie not to worry because Mr. Barnett would come back eventually and finish their order. T.J., who was several years older than Cassie, had been to town many times before and understood how things work in Strawberry.
Stacey wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but he knew better than to approach Mr. Barnett. As soon as Cassie tapped on Mr. Barnett’s arm, Stacey told her to be quiet. Once Mr. Barnett started shouting, Stacey grabbed Cassie’s arm and told her that they needed to get out of there. Stacey was worried that Cassie was stirring up trouble for everyone.
As a business owner in Mississippi, Mr. Barnett knows that when white members of the community enter his store, he is expected to rush over to help. He was shocked when Cassie, a young black child, approached him and suggested that he had made a mistake. Perhaps he felt there would be a backlash from the community if he showed any sympathy for Cassie, or perhaps he thought she was being deliberately disrespectful. Of course, Mr. Barnett could be someone who looks for opportunities to humiliate African Americans in his community. Readers can only guess at Mr. Barnett’s reasons for reacting the way he did since he is not one of the novel’s main characters.
You can compare and contrast characters’ perspectives in any significant scene—doing so will help you understand the characters more quickly. Think back to the very beginning of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, when Little Man refused to take his school book from Miss Crocker. Readers saw the event through Cassie’s eyes, of course, but Cassie knew her brother well and was fully aware that his reactions were based on disappointment about the condition of the book.
Question
What was Miss Crocker thinking? How did she interpret Little Man’s behavior?
