Enoch and the Gorilla

I found this piece to be almost overbearingly sad. Enoch, as a character was very interesting; he didn't fit in anywhere and was forced into a city he didn't know because of his father. The narration in this piece is particularly interesting. It gave us an outsider, third person perspective with hints that it was from Enoch's point of view. However, while reading it, I almost did not realize just how strange Enoch's actions were throughout the text. The narration made it seem like these actions weren't very out of the ordinary, in fact, it displayed them like any other simple task one might perform throughout the day. It's only when the reader takes a step back to truly analyze what Enoch was doing that we realize just how out of place he really was. In the beginning, he's standing in line to shake hands with a gorilla. On top of that, he's standing with children. Think about that a minute; an adult man would look ridiculously out of place among a throng of kids that probably barely reach his waist. Again, when he shreds the umbrella, the narration describes this action almost offhandedly. Now, imagine what Enoch would look like with a sharp skeleton of the umbrella tucked under his arm.

The narration seemed to lull the reader into a sense of sympathy for Enoch, and this sympathy (for me anyway) can blind the reader into noticing weird or important things about the text.