How The Mood Of The Girl Who Was Saturday Night

Hope Prospers All
Hope is an individual’s perseverance to achieve their goals despite of possible complications. The novel The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and the poem “Invention” both show reactions and circumstances people face from destiny. As a matter of fact, in Greek times, people looked upon God in every situation and believed in prophecies. Some knew what they are destined for, for instance, Oedipus the King. He discovers his destiny which is to kill his father and marry his mother. He tried changing his fortune, but he could not do so. As destiny is what is ought to happen. It can be argued that destiny is out of fate, everything is decided by the Supreme Being or and by a humans’ will. In contrast, the writings differentiate between
injustice and fate towards the characters through the use of isolation and hope.
In effectively using imagery and tone Heather O’Neill and Tina Chang both stress the need of hope as it can flip a miserable life to a hopeful one. They emphasized on the idea of isolation which usually breaks a person optimism but the same isolation can aspire them to work harder in order to make their future better than their past. While O’Neill used Nouschka’s isolation from her mother as an yearning for success, Chang compared Tina’s life with animals to demonstrate how animals do not have free will hence they cannot hope for a better life while human can use their decision making power to better their lives.
Heather O’Neill and Tina Chang underline that people tend to isolate themselves because they fear the reaction will evoke them from others. O’Neill uses Nouschka’s life as an ideal example. Nouschka was expected to be born with a silver spoon as she
was a celebrity’s daughter but instead her birth was merely worth of her parent’s interest. O’Neill uses imagery to describe Nouschka’s life, “My mother gave birth to me without turning away from the pan. I fell smack onto the kitchen floor. I lay there with the family dogs looking at me” (O’Neill 192). Through the comparison between Nouschka and the dog, O’Neill shows that Nouschka’s importance to her parents is nothing more than a dog; there was no joy or happiness on her birth even though she was her parent’s first child. The tone in this quote shows resentment from Nouschka which is expected as she did not receive the love a child is expected to get from their parents. Similarly, Chang describes Tina who is isolated from her biological family and therefore does not know her roots. Chang with the use of imagery, describes Tina’s admission to the world, “He said, Tina, your body came out floating.// I was born in the middle of monsoon season,// palm trees tearing the tin roofs”(Chang). The bizarre birth of Tina is a lesson of fate and isolation. Children who are usually found in the lakes are the ones that are isolated by their families. Tina was one of those abandoned children but her fate saved her from an unfortunate death. O’Neill and Chang both used imagery to voice the isolated birth of children who are deserted by their parents either physically by killing or giving them for adoption or emotionally by neglecting their needs.
O’Neill and Chang also emphasize the significance of hope which can flip a miserable life to a hopeful one.
They use sufferings of their characters to reinforce that when a moment can kill a person the same moment with hope can bring a dead person back to life. O’Neill uses tone to exhibit hope in Nouschka’s life. Nouschka’s life has always been miserable, yet she never stopped trying. Before applying for work, Nouschka says, “My English was shitty and they apparently had a lot of English clientele. But the job was certainly worth trying for” (O’Neill 162). Nouschka’s tone is optimistic even though her future is more or less hopeless in an educated society. Nouschka’s example gives an incredible message to keep trying despite the degree of difficulty or the probability of change. Similarly, in her poem, Chang uses an optimistic tone to make comparison between animals and Tina. She focuses on dead animals, “eyes open, eyes open” (Chang). Tina is referring to a dead animal but she is actually talking to herself. Her life similar to Nouschka is not an ideal life but she is encouraging herself to open her eyes and find the opportunities to change her life in any possible way. Just like fall doesn’t last the entire year, similarly, life is not always miserable. Humans are gifted with free will and the power to make decisions. Nouschka and Tina both hoped for a better life and made an effort to make it better and
worthwhile.
By using imagery and tone, Chang and O’Neill display hope as an aspiration to achieve their objectives. No matter how hard or complicated life gets, one should not lose hope. They should do their very best to achieve their goal. Thus, both the protagonists are able to convey their message to live life at the fullest without losing motivation. In The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, despite of her isolation with her mother, Nouschka does not give on a happier life. Instead of sitting at home regretting over her life, she takes a step out of her comfort zone and finds a respectable job to make her life better. Similarly, in “Invention”, Tina is also isolated from her parents who left her alone when she was a baby, yet Tina does not cry over her unfortunate life but instead she prepares herself to survive on the island. From this, it can be learned that life becomes meaningful when one has motivation to achieve something without relying on others. “We know what we are but we may not know what we may be” (Shakespeare).