" The hardest habit to break, since it was the habit of a lifetime, would be listening
to myself listen to him. That habit would destroy any chance of seeing my brother on his
terms; and seeing him in his terms, learning his terms, seemed the whole point of learning
It is sometimes difficult to imagine ourselves in someone else's shoes. We see,
hear, absorb and interpret all that which is going on around us, and so we determine the
how, and why of every situation, of every circumstance or thought. When looking at
something from a different angle, in the case of John Edgar Wideman's essay Our Time,
from the perspective of another person in that same situation, it is challenging to imagine
or interpret that situation in another way.
I find this quote significant to what Wideman captures in his essay, the telling of
one story through a number of characters whose lives all coincide with one another.
Wideman observed his brother's life of wildness and crime from a third person
perspective, such as an audience member watches a movies, yet no interaction occurs.
Wideman has conversations with his brother, but fails to really listen to what Robby is
This statement ties into the main ideas and structure of the essay, how the
perspectives of many characters all portrayed through one narrator can be bias and
misleading. When Wideman discusses his mother's role and thoughts on her misguided
son's life, he describes how she is affected by the actions around her. "Garth's death and
Robby's troubles were at the center of her new vision. Like a prism, they caught the light,
transformed it so she could trace the seemingly random inconveniences and impositions
coloring her life to their source in a master plan." (Wideman 766) Unlike the narrator, his
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