Natasha Tretheway's Storyville Diary: Naming

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a name is worth a first impression. The name given to a person at births establishes how the person perceives themselves as well as how others view that person. With nothing but a name, people can imagine and create images on how a person looks, what they talk like, how they move, and other characteristics that make a person who they are. In Natasha Tretheway’s Bellocq’s Ophelia, names and naming play an integral part of the story line of the series of poems.
The basis behind the series of poem is that it chronicles the journey of a woman’s descent into the underbelly that is New Orleans prostitution or Storyville. As the young woman, whom Tretheway has named Ophelia, learns the ropes of Storyville …show more content…
In the poem Storyville Diary: Naming, the readers see that Ophelia had some power over her circumstances at some point in her life. She explains how her name was the first word she learned how to write and how naming a child is similar to a journey. She says, “I feel even more the need for some new words to mark this journey like the naming of a child.” Before she arrives in New Orleans, she exhibits some sort of power in her name in that she recognizes that it represents a marker in her life. Ophelia also recognizes how naming things mirrors a journey and how it represents the new aspect of her life that is soon to …show more content…
He begins to take pictures of Ophelia and other prostitutes for his latest project. Ophelia begins to take an interest in photography as Bellocq continues with his project. The more photographs that Bellocq take, the more that Ophelia is learning about photography and the mechanics of that artistic medium. Near the end of the project, Ophelia exclaims in the poem Bellocq, “I’m not so foolish that I don’t know that this photograph we make will bear the stamp of his name, not mine.” Ophelia means that though both of them, Bellocq and Ophelia have worked on the photograph, people will see and remember Bellocq’s name and not Ophelia because of her being a prostitute. This is another example of how Ophelia is stripped of power in her name or in naming. Those photos would have brought her some much joy and a sense of pride that she would have gained power in herself, but because she will not be represented she continues to get stripped of her inner