Sunday has been a rather unsympathetic character throughout the novel, spending most of the time either drunk, abusive, or both. The first substantial glimpse of sympathy towards Sunday, however, occurs at the beginning of chapter 19. "Sunday Oke woke with a start. It was not a noise that woke him. Nor was it the silence. It was something moving between, deep inside him" (201). The beginning of this chapter is different from all of the previous, in that it starts with the third-person omniscient narrator focalized through Sunday. It isn't strictly the content of the chapter that leads me to empathize, or even the way Sunday seems genuinely concerned for Elvis' well-being. Instead, it is the structure of the chapter. Sunday is described at the beginning in the following way:
"He got up, swinging skinny legs out of bed, flesh wrinkled and sagging...He slept naked, and his sex swung pudnulous and full, heavy with regret for a life of too much sex and not enough love...He peed, staring at the amber liquid collecting in the bowl as though he expected to divine what had woken him. As he poured the bucket of water in to flush it, he flet like his life was going down the drain" (202).
This paragraph is so densely loaded with symbols and images, that the metaphors entwine themselves within each other, adding to the grogginess of the morning, mixed with the knowledge that Elvis had been raped without his father knowing. The reference to his erection and loveless sex is a pointer towards his deeply internalized sense of masculinity, but by the end of the chapter, Sunday is entirely helpless. Elvis no longer fears or respects his father, and doesn't believe his father is of any use or merit. The "instinctive" kiss on the head that Elvis leaves Sunday with on his bald spot is not only an unintentionally and emasculating gesture, but also a sign of the age Sunday feels.
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