In Jamaica Kincaid’s passage, the narrator clearly struggles with her assimilation to her newer, more modern world. She has experienced an arguably better lifestyle since she left her home, but these “firsts” make her “smile with my mouth turned down”(11). These new experiences do not make her happy or make her feel comfortable. She’s living out of her own skin in a different and jarring new life. Nothing is familiar, and nothing from her former life fits in with her present. However, her past is a part of her sense of self, and the new and demanding current situation threatens her “familiar and predictable”(40) past, although “a not very nice situation”(53-54). The narrator identifies more with her past than her new environment. She describes her current world as cold and gray compared to her warm and colorful memories. The cold air and the weak sun, “trying to shine” (21) emphasize her unpleasant first impression of her new situation. She had put on a “gay dress made out od madras cloth‒the same sort I would wear if I were at home” (24-25), and her tone implies her excitement in finally being able to live in a better place. The change in mood from the dreary January weather to the gay sundress from the Caribbean highlights her discomfort and conflict with her …show more content…
She herself doesn’t seem to know what she wants. The narrator compares herself to characters in books that have experienced the same identity crisis and feels that she also “long[s] to go back where it was not very nice”(51-52 because she “understood it and knew where I stood there” (56-57). Her past and her present cannot peacefully exist, so she is in the middle being pulled both ways. She even knows “it was all wrong”(26) for her knowledge and her self from the past would not fit into her new life. She now knows homesickness and even more
In the passage from the novel LUCY, author Jamaica Kincaid dramatizes the forces of self and environment, through her character whose identity is challenged with a move. The new home provided all she needed, but it was all so many changes, she “didn’t want to take in anything else” (15-16). Her old “familiar and predictable past”(40) stayed behind her, and she now had to find who she was in her new life. Kincaid uses detail, metaphor, and tone in the passage to show her character’s internal struggle.
She questions, “What I am to you now that you are no / longer what you used to be to me? / Who are we to each other now …” (Sutphen 1-3). She remembers the good times, but she is uncertain about what he is feeling. She wants to know, and she needs to know. According to Shawn Lewis, “Divorce people often fantasy hiring a hit-man one moment, and discussing a reconciliation in the next moment. They sometimes become recluses, and frequently spend sleepless nights contemplating whether life will be worth living the next morning.” In other words, the doubts are consuming her. There are unanswered questions, which leaves the woman confused about her feelings. Likewise, the reader can relate to the woman because she is having anxiety waiting for answers. On the other hand, the reader are left wondering how her partner felt towards
In this excerpt by Jamaica Kincaid, the speaker contemplates her new environment, which challenges her sense of self. It begins by describing the speaker’s discomfort of being thrown into a new situation in which she “didn’t want to take in anything else” (14,15). The narrator faces problems when this new environment challenges the preconceived knowledge she has, such as “the sun was shining but the air was cold” (27,28). Although small, this fact represents part of a larger issue that the speaker must take in. It challenges the excitement and hope she once had for this new adventure, turning it into sadness and discontent with her new lifestyle.
The two passages “girl” by jamaica kincaid and “salvador, late or early” focus on the burdens of young children or children in general. Which shows how the older we get the more responsibilities we have. The following paragraphs are going to analyze evidence and techniques the author uses to show these burdens on children. Starting with “girl” and how jamaica uses her techniques to show the burdens.
It is my opinion that the main character moves from dislike of social divide, and a dislike of her elevated status, to complacency, and finally gratitude; and that these changes are brought on due to her own experiences of hardship. Throughout this essay I will attempt to demonstrate and rationalize this belief.
She sees her father old and suffering, his wife sent him out to get money through begging; and he rants on about how his daughters left him to basically rot and how they have not honored him nor do they show gratitude towards him for all that he has done for them (Chapter 21). She gives into her feelings of shame at leaving him to become the withered old man that he is and she takes him in believing that she must take care of him because no one else would; because it is his spirit and willpower burning inside of her. But soon she understands her mistake in letting her father back into he life. "[She] suddenly realized that [she] had come back to where [she] had started twenty years ago when [she] began [her] fight for freedom. But in [her] rebellious youth, [she] thought [she] could escape by running away. And now [she] realized that the shadow of the burden was always following [her], and [there she] stood face to face with it again (Chapter 21)." Though the many years apart had changed her, made her better, her father was still the same man. He still had the same thoughts and ways and that was not going to change even on his death bed; she had let herself back into contact with the tyrant that had ruled over her as a child, her life had made a complete
For the entire play, Rita wore many sunny, brightly colored clothing items. In the first act, Rita’s multi-colored skirts with flowers printed on them, vibrant scarfs, and neon orange headband spoke of her optimistic, maybe even a bit naïve, outlook on life and her u...
the protagonist is Janie, who comes back to her hometown unannounced and without her husband. When Janie comes back she is dressed in clothing women in that time period were not seen wearing, ‘“What she doin coming back here in dem overalls? Can’t she find no dress to put on?...”’ (Hurston 18). Janie goes against the status quos of the African-American woman during the Great Depression. When Janie comes back all the men were watching her walk to her house, “The men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets; the great rope of black hair swinging to her waist and unraveling in the wind like a plume;...” (Hurston 18). Janie is very independent and does not care about what other people think or say about her. Pearl Stone is one of the woman who talked about Janie to the other women while she was walking home; Pearl does not like Janie and feels as if Janie being different is a bad thing.
Picture a world where a person’s heritage was stripped completely away and they were forced to accept the new strange culture of the nation that conquered them. Hopelessness, despair, and hatred are just a portion of the emotions that one would experience. In the autobiographical essay, On Seeing England for the First Time written by Jamaica Kincaid, this is exactly what happened to the author when she was a young girl living in her native homeland, Antigua. In this essay, Kincaid expresses her strong resentment towards England for dominating her native country; she views England as in a position of dictator over her life and country. With regards to this, Kincaid employs the rhetorical strategies pathos, bitter tone, anaphora, imagery, and figurative language to convey her enmity towards England.
This use of similes and metaphors describe a scene where the author is carrying out her mission with an imaginative audience. This signifies the typical free-flying imagination of a child. And also in the line “I bask in the sun in my exalted position, almost sky-high, feeling as filly and nearly as pink as the bathers I am wearing.”, the use of adjectives and similes, the feeling of immense excitement is shown clearly to the responder. The mood and tone of the passage changes dramatically as the perspective changes in paragraph 6. The author... ...
Don’t, won’t, mustn’t, shouldn’t, never! All common words heard from mothers every day. In Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl” so many “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” are listed off that the reader feels as though they’re back being lectured by their own mother! Kincaid writes with such an overbearing tone that any reader would feel the pressures of being a girl. And that is exactly what she meant to do; Kincaid uses “Girl” to almost bully the reader into feeling the claustrophobic pressures a girl feels, but not only that she challenges the reader to imagine the strenuous rules and regulations girls must face when it comes to their sexuality.
Imagine your culture being thrown aside and a new one was all that was taught to you? How would you react to it? In this story the author, Jamaica Kincaid, is talking about how she reacted to this and what happened to her. The author grows up in a place where England colonization had taken place. She grew up in Antigua, a small island in the Caribbean. She is taught all her life about England, a place she has never seen. At an early age she started to realize that the English had taken over her culture. After many years of hating this country she had to see the place that had taught her a different culture and ideas. When she arrives there the hate for the country tripled and she starts to pick apart the entire place and everywhere she goes. As she moves through the countryside her feelings of hate start to show them self’s in her thought and words. The feeling of deja vu, she has been there before, starts to come in after all of the years of maps and description of the foreign land.
“When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real”(Oliver, 1052), here she is saying that she was able to live an amazing life and does not regret anything, she has lived her life, the way she wanted to and she is proud of that. “Don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument”(Oliver, 1052), here she is saying that she doesn’t want to fight it, be scared of it, or be intimidated by it. Rather she is facing it and accepts it as her destiny. “I don't want to end up simply having visited this world”(Oliver, 1052), here she is saying she wants to make herself at home before she leaves to the next world, since her life was temporary while she lived, she will be settled in death when it comes towards her.
she always used to wish for a way to escape her life. She saw memories
Kincaid recalls “seeing England for the first time”, but in fact “there were many times of seeing England for the first time” (5). This statement demonstrates irony because one cannot see something for the first time, multiple times. The use of irony helps the audience realize that Kincaid encountered many new things from England throughout her life. Although she never saw England for the first time multiple times, she was exposed to new elements of England’s culture that gave the illusion of seeing England for the first time. The choice to employ irony to get the reader to stop and think about all of the elements of England in Kincaid’s life. Also, how colonies become suddenly flooded with new things from the colonizer. As well as how, colonization not only takes away one’s culture but introduces