Course Work. Alienation

The story of the “Sandpiper” has many similarities to the story’s “The Rain Horse” and “Her First Ball”. One of the similarities in those 3 stories is alienation. The woman in the “Sandpiper” is treated as an outsider by her husband, his family and his country. The man in “The Rain Horse” was treated like an outsider by the land and the land did not welcome him as well as looked down on him. In “Her First Ball”, Leila was treated like an outsider by the girls and the men at the ball. The theme of outsiders will be discussed in this essay using all the stories there were mentioned above. In the story of the ‘Sandpiper’, the narrator has been treated like an outsider by her husband’s family, country and her daughter. Her husband’s old nanny tells her not to do the house work as the nanny will do it for her. When an outsider goes to another country, they get treated as royalty. The narrator is treated as an outsider by the nanny. “My husband translated all this for me and said things to her which I have come to understand meant tomorrow I would get used to all their ways.” Her husband thinks that she is able to understand everything and the way they live in a day and as an outsider, she doesn’t understand their language so her husband has to translate it for her. The narrator tells the readers on the feeling of love and belonging from her child towards her husband and his foreign land. She describes her child by calling her “his child”. The narrator calls her child as ‘his child’ and not hers because she is an outsider in his country while "his child" was born here so "his child" does not belong to her. “She has no need of me, she has her father….” The narrator may have suggested that Lucy chooses her father over her because her father is a part of Egypt and the narrator isn’t. Her role as a wife and mother has been taken away from her. The author uses the Sandpiper as a symbol. It symbolically means that it stays grounded in the sensory world while the other