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Michelle Cliff’s utilization of language in Abeng is paramount to the novel’s discussion of nationality and identity. As it is a postcolonial text, Cliff faces the decision of what language she would adopt to tell the story, ultimately deciding on hybridizing formal English in narration and dialogue with occasional Patois dialogue. Her decision here communicates several of the underlying themes of the text that Cliff attempts to address. Throughout the novel, there is juxtaposition between Clare’s narration and the dialogue that occurs between her and other characters. Cliff introduces the juxtaposition in a way that it is difficult to notice at first, due to early encounters with characters being in English. However, as the novel progresses, …show more content…
I would suggest that this reversal of focus also leads the reader to address the idea of euro-centricity, which the text actively fights with its depictions of the history of Jamaica. Moreover, this is exactly what Shelly Bhoil points out in her article “The Politics of Language, Style and Theme in Raja Rao’s Kanthapur.” She states “Rao has whetted the colonizing master’s own tools such as the English language to dismantle the master’s “euro-centric” house and to renovate it so as to have space for the “natives” who are “othered” to the margins of the mainstream world-consciousness” (82) I believe that this is exactly the same idea that Cliff brings to Abeng. She does this in her rewriting of history to downplay the importance of the white settlers, while still holding onto the significance of her culture. This idea also continues into her adoption of Patois in the novel, that she can dismantle the euro-centricity by including other dialects in order to remove the centralization on formal …show more content…
Here, Cliff employs it to convey closeness and distance, even taking it to the extreme of alienation. There is a significant attempt to rid the novel of the euro-centric overtones present in other texts. Moreover, she does this in creative and interesting ways, utilizing the juxtaposition between the formal English narration of Clare, and the Patois dialect that both Clare and the reader encounter throughout the text. At first, portraying this as ‘other’, however later in the novel the shift becomes that the English narration is the other, the Patois serving as the base of connection for Clare. However, the text never allows the reader to forget constant tension between the narration and the dialogue and it serves to highlight the alienation and distance that Clare feels throughout the
Within Rhys’s novel, he incorporates the normality of the West Indies during the nineteenth and mid- twentieth centuries. Antoinette, the main character, who happens to be a white Creole, is mistreated and discriminated because of her identity. Throughout the text, characters are victimized by prejudices. For example, Antoinette and Annette become victims of traumatic experience as they face numerous kinds of mistreatment. Antoinette had to deal with an arranged marriage, which results her becoming distressed. Throughout this marriage, she was treated irrationally by her husband, Rochester and servants. She was unable to relate to Rochester because their upbringings were incompatible. She had to stomach the trauma of being shunned because of her appearance and identity. She was called names, mainly “white cockroach”, and was treated as an
Amy tan was raised by her Asian mother that she did not speak proper English “broken English”. The strategies that Amy Tan used in the story made her realized different English that she uses in her life. She was giving many speeches to a lot of people and along with her speeches she realized the different English that she never uses with her mother, when she was talking about her book The Joy Luck Club. She noticed her different English when she was walking with her mother and husband; she said “not waste money that way” her mom or her husband did not realized her different English.
Tan makes an appeal to emotion with the connections she describes. A connection between a mother and daughter that is wrought with emotion is as relatable as humaneness is to a human. There is a soft declaration to be found in Tan’s statement, “I knew I had succeeded where it counted when my mother finished reading my book and gave me her verdict: “So easy to read.” Tan gains trust by appealing to emotion with something as understandable as the loving and more often than not tension riddled connection between a mother and her daughter. Tan incorporates the intimacy of the “broken” language in correlation to her husband with these words, “It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language I grew up with” (Tan 1). Under the assumption that Louis DeMattei (Tan’s husband) has no prior history with the Chinese Language Tan makes an important point of the use of the “broken” language she learned from her mother. Demattei doesn’t inquire or correct Tan when she switches between the English she acquired from the vast expanses of English literature and the English she acquired from her mother. Tan says, “he even uses it with me,” there is an implied level of comfort within the relationship she has with her husband. Tan shares what is viewed as “broken” and in need of fixing with Demattei and he reciprocates, leaving them
Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker expresses prominent themes of language and racial identity. Chang-Rae Lee focuses on the struggles that Asian Americans have to face and endure in American society. He illustrates and shows readers throughout the novel of what it really means to be native of America; that true nativity of a person does not simply entail the fact that they are from a certain place, but rather, the fluency of a language verifies one’s defense of where they are native. What is meant by possessing nativity of America would be one’s citizenship and legality of the country. Native Speaker suggests that if one looks different or has the slightest indication that one should have an accent, they will be viewed not as a native of America, but instead as an alien, outsider, and the like. Therefore, Asian Americans and other immigrants feel the need to mask their true identity and imitate the native language as an attempt to fit into the mold that makes up what people would define how a native of America is like. Throughout the novel, Henry Park attempts to mask his Korean accent in hopes to blend in as an American native. Chang-Rae Lee suggests that a person who appears to have an accent is automatically marked as someone who is not native to America. Language directly reveals where a person is native of and people can immediately identify one as an alien, immigrant, or simply, one who is not American. Asian Americans as well as other immigrants feel the need to try and hide their cultural identity in order to be deemed as a native of America in the eyes of others. Since one’s language gives away the place where one is native to, immigrants feel the need to attempt to mask their accents in hopes that they sound fluent ...
Taylor, the author uses both foreshadowing and figurative language to help convey a theme, sometimes people need to resort to resort to violence to keep themselves safe, by using these literary devices to help describe important events in the story. These Literary devices help improve the description, and can help convey a certain theme throughout the
...d issues of post-colonialism in Crossing the Mangrove. It is clear that Conde favors multiplicity when it comes to ideas of language, narrative, culture, and identity. The notion that anything can be understood through one, objective lens is destroyed through her practice of intertextuality, her crafting of one character's story through multiple perspectives, and her use of the motif of trees and roots. In the end, everything – the literary canon, Creole identity, narrative – is jumbled, chaotic, and rhizomic; in general, any attempts at decryption require the employment of multiple (aforementioned) methodologies.
Throughout the story, O’Connor uses creative words and phrases as well as figurative language to help keep the reader engaged. For example, when the family is driving, O’Connor makes it a point to thoroughly describe the area, which they are passing through. “She [the grandmother] pointed out interesting details of the scenery: Stone Mountain, the blue granite that i...
... temperament than any she has had before and the walls that she finds herself within are attractive. At Moor House, Jane is exposed to a way of living she had never quite seen before and, having seen the reality of the world she had previously only imagined. She then takes a job as a teacher -- the only skill she truly has. She finds another home, and again it suits her prospects. The cottage is “a little room with white-washed walls and a sanded floor" and a bed to sleep in. Here at Moor house is where Jane learns what it is to be an independent woman. Of course the twenty thousand pounds from John Eyre's inheritance doesn’t hurt.
ane Eyre is a story filled with many forms of abuse and bad customs. In this essay I will bring you close to these. I will point out tyrants and abusers that Jane faces throughout her life. Jane Eyre Is also filled with hypocrisy and I will expose that. The suffering that Jane endures will be discussed. The book Jane Eyre starts out very powerful. Our first meeting of Jane is at Gateshead. Jane is an orphan who is being taken care of by Mrs. Reed her aunt by marriage. There is no love for Jane here; not only that the only thing here for Jane is abuse. “Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned?”(Pg.11) Keep in mind that this girl is only 10 years old. She is all alone. She is on her own. “I was a discord in Gateshead Hall; I was like nobody there”(Pg.12) Within the First ten pages we learn of the harshest abuse Jane has to face in the book. The infamous “Red Room.” Jane is sent to the “Red Room” after a dispute with John. John is Mrs. Reeds favorite, but he is a little tyrant. The foul part is that Jane was injured by him and she got punished. The reason the “Red Room” seems scary is that it is the room Mr. Reed passed away in. “ And I thought Mr. Reed’s spirt, harassed by the wrongs of his sister’s child, might quit its abode.” So Jane feels that his spirit is present and her harassment of him might keep him from showing himself.” As Jane sits in the “Red Room” a shadow of some kind begins to move about the wall like a dancer. Jane starts to worry to the point that her mind becomes overwhelmed and she passes out. When she wakes up, she begs Bessie and Miss Abbot the help to let her out. They run to Mrs. Reed to tell her of Jane’s high fever. As the sunsets a new found factor of worry is thrown at Jane. It becomes evident that she may not make it through the night. Mr. Lloyd the doctor arrives to tend to Jane, and he recommends that Jane attend a school called Lowwood. Jane makes it through the night but her abuse and torments have just begun. She will soon face a monster and a tyrant far worse than that of young John known as Mr.
...xtent will this essay bring about a change in Antigua? The Antiguan scene can only be modified by the government choosing to run the country in a more manner that will benefit everyone associated with Antigua, especially its natives. The native’s behaviours are related to their jealousy of tourists, and of the tourist’s ability to escape their own hometown to take a vacation. While a tourist can relate to the idea that the exhaustion felt after a vacation comes from dealing with the invisible animosity in the air between the natives and themselves, having this knowledge is almost as good as not having it, because there is nothing that the tourist, or the reader, can really DO about it! If Kincaid’s purpose is solely to make tourists aware of their actions, she has succeeded. If Kincaid’s purpose is to help Antigua, she may not have succeeded to the same magnitude.
In her article “ Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club, argues that she speaks many “Englishes,” and although some people may not understand Tan’s mother’s limited English, but Tan thinks that her mother’s informal language is the most intimate and expressive language in Tan’s life.
Kincaid’s experience starts us with putting us as the readers into her text as the tourists of Antigua. Noting the tourists find the place of absolute beauty, but the natives of Antigua find the tourists ugly. She then goes on to the old times when Antigua was in colonial possession, but now has their people enslaved, which has corrupted the island. The people of Antigua dislike the tourists out of envy, in spite of being so poor they are not able to travel anywhere, and are ‘stuck’ in their homeland, just watching the travelers take in the beauty of their land when they are trapped in.
“The Third Space of enunciation” disrupts the consistency between the meaning and the reference, “makes the structure of meaning and reference an ambivalent process,” which consequently leads to the challenge of “our sense of the historical identity of culture as a homogenizing, unifying force, authenticated by the originary Past.” As a result, although the third space is “unrepresentable in itself,” it, in Bhabha’s words, “constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and read anew.” This ability of enunciation, crossing the limit of time, lays a foundation for the postcolonial writing and reading to overthrow the authority of the colonial discourse and articulate for self. In many postcolonial writings, “it is the problem of how, in signifying the present, something comes to be repeated, relocated and translated in the name of tradition, in the guise of a pastness that is not necessarily a faithful sign of historical memory but a strategy of representing authority in terms of the artifice of archaic” (Bhabha 1994, 35). Through deconstructing, rereading, and modifying traditions from their own
Setting, a major gothic element, can play an important role in a story, including impacting a character’s behavior. For instance, the protagonist of the story, whose name is not mentioned, describes how she gets, “... a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house (3)”. The location of the house in the story implies that since it is an estate, it consists of a bigger area of land, meaning it is possibly farther away from the town. Being away from others and confined to the estate causes the narrator to the feel isolated. Additionally, the feeling of isolation intensifies when John, the protagonist’s husband, suggests that his wife resides in the nursery.
Use of Language Irony is portrayed in limitless forms but in Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest, it is exposed through Wilde’s use of language. To begin his play, Wilde uses Jack and Gwendolen’s relationship to show how little effort people in the Victorian Era put forth to claim the reputation of being earnest. Wilde’s view on rich people is delineated through the shallowness of Algernon and Lady Bracknell who believe that since they are rich, they are able to control natural forces such as death. Finally, Wilde displays irony through his two major characters, Jack and Algernon. They are both childish men that end up with the most in the end even though they are the least deserving.