Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
First Person (Central Narrator)
Wonder is narrated in the first person throughout… but that doesn't mean it's the same person guiding us from start to finish. Instead—and pretty uniquely—each part of this book features a different narrator. Like a movie that is filmed with a whole bunch of cameras, R.J. Palacio gives us different angles from six different narrators over the course of eight parts:
Part 1: August
Part 2: Via
Part 3: Summer
Part 4: Jack
Part 5: Justin
Part 6: August
Part 7: Miranda
Part 8: August
In the FAQ section of her web page, R.J. Palacio admits that she didn't expect to craft a novel with multiple narrators when she began—Wonder is, of course, Auggie's story first and foremost—but as she wrote, she says:
I started getting very curious about Via and what she was going through in her life, and I wanted to get behind the motivation behind Summer's bravely sitting down with Auggie at lunchtime, or Jack's betrayal, and I knew that to do that, to really explore Auggie's complete story, I would have to leave his head for a while. Auggie's a smart kid, and he notices a lot of things, but he doesn't ever really know the full extent of the impact he has on people.
So each narrator fills in details about facets of Auggie's life: Via reveals a great deal about the Pullman family culture and home life, Summer and Jack give us details about life at school. Justin has only just met August, so his observations and interactions are all in the present, but Miranda has known Auggie since he was a baby, so her narrative gives us lots of info about the past. If it sounds a little dizzying, worry not: Palacio makes changing perspectives like this look easy.