The Past And Present In Michelle Cliff's Abeng

As people, we are often more inclined to listen to what people currently tell us. To live in the present based on what we observe. To overlook events from the past that hold many principles we are unaware of. In Michelle Cliff’s Abeng, these distinctions of the past versus the present are identified through Cliff’s use of varying repetition, sentence structure and writing style for each shift in time, depictions the past to be objective and true and the present to be affected by people’s different perceptions. Cliff’s contrasting portrayals of the past and present serves as a bridge between what is true and what is perceived for her readers, which on a larger scale, allows Clare to recognize the inherent flaws of the prejudice in her society …show more content…
Similar to how Cliff’s use of flashbacks and historical accounts provide insight and truth for the reader, The Diary of Anne Frank provides Clare an account of historical validity instead of what other people had always “educated” her with. Clare, up to this point, does not even know any answers behind the distinctions within her own family. This knowledge was never exposed to her, just as knowledge of “Black Africans” succeeding was hidden from people of the Tabernacle. Likewise, Clare’s educators attempted to manipulate what she had learned from Anne Frank’s accurate historical account, proving how influential unreliable information or lack thereof can be on present perception. Cliff’s sentence structure regarding the educator’s viewpoint of the Holocaust, which Clare disagrees with, parallels the structure that Cliff used earlier to depict the naivety of people of the Tabernacle. Once again, Cliff’s use of brief sentences and periods emphasize information that is being questioned including the fact that “Jews were expected to suffer. To endure. It was a fate which had been meted out to them…”(Cliff 70). For Clare, Anne Frank’s diary gave her a more vivid and authentic depiction of the Holocaust, which is analogous to how Cliff’s flashback of the anonymous woman narrated in the present tense gave readers a more accurate and descriptive account of the past, as if looking through the omniscient narrator's lense. Unlike other characters in the novel who rely on information that they are told by others, especially people of the Tabernacle, Clare recognizes the distinction between truth and perception that is highlighted in Cliff’s shifts in