“Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry.”( pg 56) This quote came from Jamaica Kincaid short story “Girl”. If a parent of this present day, told their children to do that, the child would probably just stand there and question them why. Well the girl in this story could not even get one word out to question the mother let alone only two sentences throughout the whole story. In the eyes of most islanders this is a normal thing to do. The parent sets a bunch of rules and the child must listen and not speak back. Jamaica Kincaid had a rough life growing up, there was mutual love between and her mother, but they grew to despise each other. At 17, her
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Just by the words she uses readers can tell this was the setting. For example, she states she “ soaks salt fish overnight” for cooking. Even though this was a fiction story it has real life events and takes place in the real world. This is a common theme throughout all Kincaids writings. Girl was Jamaica’s first fictional short story. In this Short story there are two characters the mother and daughter. The mother’s aggressive tone is clear to the readers, they can pick up on it really quickly. The way Jamaica writes the poem, it seems like the mothers is speaking fast with a strong voice. The mother in this story seems to be a bit controlling by what she is telling her daughter what to do. This can be seen in the way she told her daughter how she should eat and walk, to the way how she should not sing Benna in Sunday school. In the story she uses the word slut quite a lot too. This theme is not only present in girl, but it can be seen throughout much of her other writing. Of course, this probably confused readers. Some may ask themselves is he being a good mother or just trying to bring the girl down, as people say misery loves company. The character of the daughter is a whole different story. Reading this story the tone of the daughter is more soft-spoken. In the whole short story the girl only said two things. “But I don’t sing Benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school.” After she said that it’s like …show more content…
How Jamaica wrote in her stories fits in postmodernism. As readers read the story there is one thing that is significantly different from other short stories. The whole story is one big sentence. That’s crazy right! The whole story is a list of chores “to do” and it just keeps going on and on. There are no complete sentences, there is no action taking place in the story but talking. Jamaica Kincaid did not use periods for a reason. Many children of West Indians can relate to this, mothers tend to over talk their children, and lecture them nonstop about what their past consisted of. When writers put periods in the stories it shows where the writers want the reader to stop and take a breather, with West Indian parents, there are no breathers. Jamaica wanted readers to read it continually so she can show the reader the non stop commands that her mother was giving to her daughter. Jamaica’s use of semicolons to divide the advice and commands of the mother makes it a prose poem, because it lacks lines and rhymes and narrative structure. In one point of the story Jamaica is being repetitive. She uses “this is how” as the mother explains to her daughter how to do
Just by the words she uses readers can tell this was the setting. For example, she states she “ soaks salt fish overnight” for cooking. Even though this was a fiction story it has real life events and takes place in the real world. This is a common theme throughout all Kincaids writings. Girl was Jamaica’s first fictional short story. In this Short story there are two characters the mother and daughter. The mother’s aggressive tone is clear to the readers, they can pick up on it really quickly. The way Jamaica writes the poem, it seems like the mothers is speaking fast with a strong voice. The mother in this story seems to be a bit controlling by what she is telling her daughter what to do. This can be seen in the way she told her daughter how she should eat and walk, to the way how she should not sing Benna in Sunday school. In the story she uses the word slut quite a lot too. This theme is not only present in girl, but it can be seen throughout much of her other writing. Of course, this probably confused readers. Some may ask themselves is he being a good mother or just trying to bring the girl down, as people say misery loves company. The character of the daughter is a whole different story. Reading this story the tone of the daughter is more soft-spoken. In the whole short story the girl only said two things. “But I don’t sing Benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school.” After she said that it’s like …show more content…
How Jamaica wrote in her stories fits in postmodernism. As readers read the story there is one thing that is significantly different from other short stories. The whole story is one big sentence. That’s crazy right! The whole story is a list of chores “to do” and it just keeps going on and on. There are no complete sentences, there is no action taking place in the story but talking. Jamaica Kincaid did not use periods for a reason. Many children of West Indians can relate to this, mothers tend to over talk their children, and lecture them nonstop about what their past consisted of. When writers put periods in the stories it shows where the writers want the reader to stop and take a breather, with West Indian parents, there are no breathers. Jamaica wanted readers to read it continually so she can show the reader the non stop commands that her mother was giving to her daughter. Jamaica’s use of semicolons to divide the advice and commands of the mother makes it a prose poem, because it lacks lines and rhymes and narrative structure. In one point of the story Jamaica is being repetitive. She uses “this is how” as the mother explains to her daughter how to do