Jamaica Kincaid The Lessons

No matter how people learn lessons, they will stay with the person forever, and help them through life. In the short stories “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara and “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, there is lesson that a character will learn about life. Although, in “The Lesson”, the teaching was more profound and had a deeper meaning behind it, while “Girl” was a parent forcing instructions on a child in order for the child to learn how a woman is to live. This being said, the teaching is more profound in “The Lesson” than the one given in “Girl.” “Girl” is a short story that teaches that there are many lessons we learn throughout life from parents, or in this case, a single parent. The narrator in this short story is not clearly stated, but, based on the details given, the narrator is a mother who is speaking to her daughter. The parental figure is attempting to teach the child about how a girl/woman should act based on her own beliefs and experiences. The mother is a firm believer in gender roles based on the context; one can assume this is because of the time period that the mother

This story will be interpreted many ways and it all depends on the reader. The story’s structure is not one of typical short stories because there is one sentence throughout the entire reading. There isn’t a specific plot other than the pieces of advice were given throughout the girl’s life. This is known because toward the beginning of the story it says, “don’t squat down to play with marbles - you’re not a boy, you know”(105) Toward the end of the story the narrator begins to state that “this is how you take good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child.”(105-106) The first statement was talking about a childhood game, while the second statement is the mother telling her daughter how she would abort a child. These are clearly two different phases of