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Literary analysis essay on girl, jamaica kincaid
Literary analysis essay on girl, jamaica kincaid
Literary analysis essay on girl, jamaica kincaid
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They way a person reads is greatly influenced by their personal background; their story, their culture, anything that led them to who they are today. When reading How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents written by Dominican-American Julia Alvarez, many controversial points are brought up that can be interpreted in many different ways depending on who is reading. In many scenarios, it’s the matter of where the reader comes from, in this case the Dominican Republic, or the United States. By having written from both Dominican and American perspectives, Alvarez teaches how a character’s sexuality or sexual tendencies can be perceived differently depending on the reader's personal background.
In the two poems, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid and “If” by Rudyard Kipling, There are a large number of similarities. Just as there are similarities, there are also a somewhat giant amount of differences that separate these authors’ styles. There are different amounts of certainty, style, and word choice in both of these magnificently worded masterpieces. To just start, “Girl” has alternating dialogue, and even though there are no quotation marks throughout the poem.
Rachel Mathews E 260 March 13, 2018 Dr. Shaun Morgan Paper #1 “Bitter in the Mouth” by Monique Truong explores race, gender and sexuality, and never had a definite theme. It starts off with a young, seven-year-old North Carolina girl, with many layered secrets, who name was Linda Hammerick. She stated that she “fell in love with” (1) her great-uncle Baby Harper. She also talks about her parents, DeAnne and Thomas, and her best friend, Kelly. She states that she was her father’s tomboy and her mother’s baton twirler and that she went far away for college and law school, now living in New York.
Kincaid uses the word “slut” to describe a promiscuous woman, a gender stereotype and offensive term Girl will be described as if she doesn’t dress modestly or, in this case, hem her dress. This stereotype leads to the social expectation that women should change their appearance to be viewed or they will be viewed as inappropriate. As a result of this, Girl is limited from the freedom to convey her feelings, as it will go against social expectations. Lastly, this can also be seen in If by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling quotes, “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same” (Kipling, 45, lines 11-12).
Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy is another work that could be portrayed under the ladies' lobbyist law. The ladies' extremist expressions in this five-area novel could be found in the exchanges between the women characters. The imaginative and point by point examination concerning the associations among mothers and young ladies, rich and poor, and high difference in the book conveys the author's thoughts on ladies' freedom. The way that Lucy is a semi-self-depicting record of Kincaid's instructive experiences makes its voice all the more authentic. The tangibility of ladies' dissident theories in Rebecca was as to the storyteller's relationship with Maxim and his dead Mistress Rebecca.
Her attempt to voice the voicelessness of black women has focussed on the question of the mercury identity of the postcolonial writer of the modern era. Her autobiography
In the story “Girl”, Jamaica Kincaid seems to repeat the advice to the girl because it looks like the girl is not listening to her, and she is willing to have the freedom that boys have. For example, her mother is telling her not to squat down to play marbles because there are certain rules that every girl has to follow to find a husband. There are a lot of ways to do and don’t that a girl must learn how to behave so she can’t act like a slut. If she does not follow the rules, she will have a reputation of a slut, and she won’t win a
Culture and Women In “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid and “ How to date a Brown girl, Black girl, White girl or Halfie “ by Junot Diaz, both authors elaborate on culture and how it shapes outlook on women. In Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” a mother enforces her culture’s strong beliefs on her daughter. As the result, she displays her parental authority with a sequence of short commands influenced by her culture. A sense of judgment can be seen in the young girl, after questioning her mothers’ request.
The authors of two stories, Girl and A & P, used their writing to explore social norms as they relate to females. They used their talents and penned stories that allow a reader to consider and contemplate the point of view of an oppressed human in society. Both works delve into societal norms of how a female should behave. The dialect in the short stories
In the story “Girl”, Jamaica Kincaid illustrates the talk given to a young Antiguan girl about what is expected of her in order to make a point about the cultural pressures and unfair social boundaries that come with being a girl in the Caribbean. The author plays with word choice and sentence structure in a way that makes this unconventional writing style enjoyable and metaphorically resonant. Though it is possible to read this prose as a mother talking directly to her daughter and the daughter interjecting, it is actually indicative of a larger conversation between a Caribbean society and its young women; this can be most clearly seen in the discussion of Benna, of plant, animal, and human life, of promiscuity, and of manners. Benna is a musical genre similar to calypso; its lyrics often discussed British political scandals and had lewd double meanings. The daughter is instructed not to sing it in church, because the songs are about sexuality, politics and open rebellion - however, this instruction has a much larger societal meaning.
However, past all of these arbitrary things, “guardian” starts to bring the hammer down just a little bit on the girl. One critic wrote that “harsh evaluative judgements like this one are not in any way differentiated from the rest of the flow of the mother’s advice.” (Becnel, 2014) Guardian’s usage of the derogatory term “slut”, even though it would be considered offensive and insulting, could really pound in the brevity and
Female African American writers tend to focus more on the experience of black women (which we will consider for this novel). Black women are often introduced as the minority in the race, especially seen in writings during the 1970’s. Most of these writings have female characters who have domestic duties, which can reveal the passing of traditions and cultures from one generation to the next and the role of a woman in an inconvenienced household. They also deal with the image and perception of the Black woman, whether through looks, skin color, or her voice. The woman’s narrative is often formed gradually, often times alongside a woman who has already discovered herself, but we must consider that “it may take the form of exploring one’s own abilities, needs, and desires” (Tyson, 391).
As one can see, many mothers in today 's society would not be nearly as picky and constructive as the mother within "Girl" written by Jamaica Kincaid. Young girls almost always look up first to their mother for guidance and instruction on how to be a woman. Although the advice used in this story was used to help the young girl, it was also used to scold her as well. The mother 's strong belief in a woman having domestic knowledge is what drives her to preach the life lessons of a good woman to her daughter. It is through these lessons that she hopes for her daughter to be respected within her own home and by her community as well.
She calls her daughter a “slut” and wants her to see she is not a boy. She tells her, “on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don’t sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn’t speak to wharf-rat boys...” (180). She must keep her reputation up. She thinks her daughter already knows too much about sexuality and that she is being disobedient by singing the benna in Sunday school.
This novel is also autobiographical. Throughout history, women have been locked in a struggle to free themselves from the borderline that separates and differentiate themselves from men. In many circles, it is agreed that the battleground for this struggle and fight exists in literature. In a
