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The Hurt Man

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The Hurt Man
-by Wendell Berry
Sometimes in life you accomplish epiphanies. You suddenly realize something huge. It can either be something about love or something totally different. But one thing you absolutely know is that, it’s going to change the way you’re living your life. That’s the coincidence in the short story, The Hurt Man, where the young boy, Mat Feltner, realize something remarkable about life. The Hurt Man takes place in Port William which is a small town on the American Frontier. It takes place long time back in the past back in the 1880s. The situation that changes Mat’s life is started by the usual clashes in the pub. One of the men gets hurt and seeks for help on Mat’s front porch. The woman of the house, Mat’s mother, instantly helps the victim and looks beside all the blood and the smell of alcohol and saves the man’s life. That situation changes his life a lot.
This short story is told in third person by an omniscient narrator. This will say that the writer knows everything and he makes us know everything. We know what is happening inside the minds of the characters, we know how they’re feeling about certain situations we know everything. Example of the omniscient narrator can be shown on p.4 ll. 89-91. The situation on those lines is that the mother is looking at the hurt man and thinking about the situation.
“Looking at the hurt man, whose blood was dripping onto the bench and the porch floor, she said quietly, perhaps only to herself, “Oh my!” It was though she knew him without ever having known him before.”
In these lines you can perfectly see what is told earlier. You can definitely see that it’s 3rd person because of the use of she. It’s also able to see that it’s an omniscient narrator because you get in to the mother’s mindset. You get to know that she felt like she knew him. During the whole short story you learn to know Mat

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