Brown Girl, Brownstones

689 Words2 Pages

Brown Girl, Brownstones, a story that is centrally focused on a young girl’s perspective through her journey of becoming an adult. A character like Selina who is young, overly sensitive, and curious may strike the reader to be “questionable” or “unreliable” in regards to what she observes and believes. However, Marshall’s use of perspective, inclusion of lively details, and the dialogues amongst characters helps eliminates this issue and helps the reader to better understand the context of Selina’s anxiety
For starters, Marshall writes his novel in a third person omniscient point of view. This perspective allows the reader to get out of Selina’s head and expand their scopes to other character’s feelings, objectives, and thoughts. For instance, when Deighton arrives at the wedding and witnesses Silla dancing with the old man Marshall writes “He was jealous, unreasonably so, for he knew that the man was old and useless. But he could not help it. At least the old man was holding her and laughing down into her face, while he had not held her since the Sunday night before that Monday of ruin—had not touched her even, or spoken.” (Marshall 127) Evidently, the text above displays Deighton’s emotions towards his wife dancing with another …show more content…

Brown Girl, Brownstones consists of many characters who have different perspectives and see issues differently, and the only way for Marshall to present these issues were from the use of dialogue. For example Selina remarks, “No, it’s my mother. She’s gonna sell the land behind his back.” “What you talking?” “Sell it. Without his knowing.” “She just talking.” “No, she means it this time. She swore.” “She just talking. Neither name of hers down for it.” (Marshall 66) As one can see the two characters have opposing views of Silla’s intentions, and the employment of dialogue was an effective communication tool to help the readers understand the two parties’ point of

Open Document