Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer
##common.pageHeaderLogo.altText##

Articles

Volume 02, Number 2 (1977)

The Two Wes Wakehams: Point of View in The Weekend Man

  • Sheila Campbell
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1977-06-06

Abstract

The first person narrator of Richard Wright's The Weekend Man, Wes Wakeham, not only allows the reader to observe his private thoughts, but also gives the reader a sense that this narrator is consciously trying to communicate with the reader. Unlike Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy who, as a self-conscious artist, sets out to write a novel about his life and opinions, Wakeham attempts to establish a relationship with the reader on the basis of his ordinary, daily experience. Albert Camus's narrator Meursault, from The Stranger (L'Etranger), embodies a similar ordinariness, which illuminates the irony present in Wright's novel. Despite moments of contradiction and irony which might inspire distance from the narrator, Wakeham, through his powerful and seductive narration, succeeds in convincing the reader to participate in and identify with his point of view.