The March

One of the main struggles I find when reading the March is trying to keep all of the characters staright, and who is narrating at the time something is said or thought. many times I find myself thinking that the narrator is someone, then a page later i think back to what i read and I change my mind. I find it very interesting how Doctorow jumps around from character to character so its difficult to pin point who the main charatcter, and narrator really is. another topic that plays with my ind a little is the assumption that many of the people are racist including the narrator. In the book african americans are called darkies. this to me is a racist name and was one of the only accounts of racist names I have come across so far. What nakes this interesting though is, if the narrator was really a racist type of person, why would he call Pearl beautiful. I have never personally known anyone that was racist that can actually say the type of person they dont like is beautiful. I'm also not to sure about Sherman yet either. You either love or hate him. Morrison states his opinion pretty openly about how he feels about General Sherman, but he feels this way due to Morrison wanting to have Shermans spot as the general. Then on page 70 you have Wilma saying good things about Sherman, and how he is a such a good leader. Much of the first section of the book is getting to know whos side people are on, and who is jealous of another person for the postion that they are in. One of the last parts that makes me wonder is, the narrator actually taking on the role of vocalizing the characters one by one. Or is all the narration just a bunch of opinons that are based off of given what postion people are in and situation. I really dont have any of the charatcers perosnalities nailed down yet due to all of them possibly being all opinions of characters that may or may not like other characters.