The Knife Thrower

What is it within us people, that makes us want to do things that we know are wrong? Sometimes it is a guilty pleasure; we all have at least one. Sometimes, it can be lust and temptation. The Pultizer Prize-winning author, Steven Millhauser, invites us to experience a single performance act through eyes of an anonymous spectator. Hensch and his assistant host the act. Hensch is described through anonymous spectator’s eyes and rumoured stories about Hensch. Hensch is known to be bold, mysterious and a skilled knife thrower. Even though he goes over the line, the audience is tempted to stay and even volunteer. In general, the story is about a single performance act of the knife thrower and about people’s guilt for going to see this outrageous act. However, through a unique choice of narrator in his novel The Knife Thrower, Steven Millhauser creates empathy for Hensch within his readers. In addition to Millhauser’s use of symbols and colours, the story turns out to be more than a single performance act of a knife thrower. The choice of narrator, which is first person plural, is already introduced in first few lines of The Knife Thrower. “When we learned that Hensch, the knife thrower, was stopping at our town (…) we hesitated, wondering what we felt.” (ll.1-3) while using this type of narration, the readers can see things form the long-range perspective, the audience’s perspective. This way the readers get the feeling of participation in the show. This also gives Millhauser the ability to implant different kind of feelings into readers. Feelings such as guilt and pleasure, fascination and disturbance, because these are the feelings that audience/narrator is feeling. As well as the audience/narrator, the readers feel the same way. Therefore, as a reader it can be hard to understand what one feels while