Every day there is a mother who faces the fact that she has to have the big girl talk with her daughter. In Jamaica Kincaid, Girl , we are experiencing this conversation first hand. The trick is this conversation can always go two different directions. It can either go well with the mother and daughter giving each other equal opportunity to speak or with the mother taking the roll of the speaker and the daughter being the listener. In this case during “Jamaica Kincaid, Girl” it takes the route of the mother being the speaker and daughter being the listener. Aside from who is speaking these conversations also vary in the area of mood and tone. The biggest concept taken in this short story is tone. The tone reveals to us the character’s personality and mindset.
The personality and mindset are sometimes hard to understand through words, but the mother uses strict instructions to help the readers comprehend her mindset. She starts the story by going right into giving her daughter directions to “Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry.” This demonstrates
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That is why regardless which route the conversation takes of the daughter being the listener or having equal opportunity to speak it is still important. It assures the mother that she has done her job as a mother to teacher her daughter what is right, and assures the daughter that if she was ever unsure about something her mother would know. Readers were able to learn this as Jamaica Kincaid used the elements of repetition to share the personality and mindset of the mother and daughter. The revelation of those characteristics enhanced the story strongly and gave the readers to opportunity to understand both sides of the story and may have possibly helped them reconsider some things with their