The Girl Who Can By Ama Aidoo's

Various authors utilize devices such as cultural notation and point-of-view to their advantage. The two short stories and the characters within them, “The Girl Who Can” by Ama Ata Aidoo - the main character, Adjoa and “Checkouts” - the main characters being the two male and female narrators - by Cynthia Rylant, both include noticeable grammatical and structural trends in which the author of the said text apportions the textual elements toward growth of the character(s). For instance, in “The Girl Who Can,” the narrator - which narrates in third-person-omniscient, for the narrator is Adjoa- let’s the reader in on Adjoa’s, the main character, internal conflict which in this case are the effects of her culture - which idolizes the appearance

Due to the poeticism of “Checkouts,” which may be blatant due to the realistic fiction genre, the reader can experience relations to the character as they continue to change and mature throughout the text. The use of figurative language within the text, which achieves the majority of poeticism in this text, conveys the growth of the character over time by the description of the girl’s change in bowtie color. The culture, or in this case - the feeling of separation of culture is relatable in both texts - in “Checkouts” it allows the reader to better understand the main character, for it is directly stated that the female shopped for she felt distant from her new environment; in “The Girl Who Can”, however, the relation toward the culture is less relatable and therefore seems less poetic, this lack of poeticism allows the reader to take the text more seriously thus leading to the reveal of the conflict - which is Adjoa’s lack of connection to her culture - and the resolution - which is Adjoa’s talent for running. Genre, culture and conflict concur in many realistic or non-fiction