By reading Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” story, the author shows how the mother communicates with her young daughter. For example, she gives a lot of advice to her daughter; “this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for dinner” (Kincaid) and much more. The mother gives her best to show her daughter how to live a good life and having a good self-esteem. In contrast, Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path” story, the author also shows how Phoenix Jackson communicates with her grandchild. She doesn’t give advice for her grandchild but she makes sure that he obtains the right medicine. In addition, she said, “This is what come to me to do” (Welty 246). Compared to “Girl” story,…
amaica Kincaid in Girl is trying to show readers how hard it is to be a girl in the culture that the narrator is a part of. The narrator lists all the things that a girl is required to know how to do and when and how to do them. There seems to be many little things that a girl is required to know how to do and by listing all, or maybe just a few, of these things readers get a sense of how hard it may be to become a good and respected woman in the culture that the narrator is a part of.…
“Adam and Eve” by Ani Difranco and “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid are two literary works that speak to the issue of how important it is to have a mother in a daughter’s life. It is the life experience(s) that can only be communicated to a daughter by her mother. The emotions, feeling and understanding of the female experience of what a woman goes through in life. When a young lady does not receive this information for the female prospective is the difference between socialites view and becoming of a “bad” or “good” girl. It is critical to have a mother in the life of a daughter to provide emotional balance, feeling and understanding from a woman’s point of view.…
girl’s life from childhood to her early adult life. Johnson begins her piece by talking about the…
memoir, her parents seek freedom from society’s rules, and cherish their unstable way of living.…
Throughout the short story “Girl,” Jamaica Kincaid tells a story about a mother giving her daughter advice about growing up through a series of semicolons and run on sentences within a single paragraph. This technique Kincaid uses through the course of her short story is quite an unusual approach to the reader at first. Usually, short stories consist of completely structured sentences and multiple paragraphs. Although Kincaid’s structure in “Girl” is constructed in an untraditional manner, it plays an important role in describing a mother’s responsibility of teaching their daughter life lessons essential to adulthood as a woman. The advice the mother gives her daughter is quite abundant and clearly wasn’t taught in a single session, but…
A mother’s words are the ones that ring loudest in a child’s ear, are passed down from generation to generation, and the one’s that hold a special place in a child’s memory and heart forever. Expectations and guidelines are set at a young age. Morals and values are learned throughout the years, and life lessons are taught through the wisdom passed down from a mother to a daughter. Every mother has a wish for their daughter to be the best they can be. But at what point does instruction and wisdom become simply words that have been said one too many times? The short story “Girl,” written by Jamaica Kincaid is presented to the reader as a list of instructions from a mother to a daughter on how to live life to the fullest, while still being a lady. The mother seems to be almost obsessive about her daughter’s future social status and is making sure her daughter knows, even at a young age, just what she is not supposed to become. Kincaid uses repetition and metaphor in order to convey the message that it is important for a woman to respect herself and keep promiscuity to a minimum.…
Do This Do That Growing up you’re trying to find your place, trying to figure out what is right and what is wrong. Often times our parents would fill us in on the “dos” and “don’ts”. In “Girl,” by Jamaica Kincaid, the mother of the girl is giving strict advice. The girl listens tentatively, only interrupting her Mother twice. Her Mother’s objective is to scold her daughter, but at the same time offer some advice.…
Thesis: The mother shows she's loving and caring towards the daughter The mother shows she's loving and caring of daughter by her tone in the story. The mother’s tone reveals her to be nurturing but also shows elements of potty for her daughter also. Early on the mother states that she is trying to “prevent” her daughter from looking “Like the slut you are so bent on becoming” (Kincaid 185). The mother later goes on to express to the daughter “ This is how you sweep a whole house” or “How to grow okara”(Kincaid 185).…
The central idea in this story seems to be the mother’s search of an understanding of her daughter’s personality and outlook on life. The majority of the story is the mother trying to depict reasons for why her daughter is the way she is, so delicate, reserved, needless, and even unhappy at times. She seems to also defend her parenting choices by making excuses or blaming the urges of others in order to not have all the blame on her. She speaks about how she had no other option but to put her in the care of someone else at the age of two, even though she knew the teacher was “evil” (Pg. 925). “It was the only place there was…the only way I could hold a job” (pg. 925).…
In Jamaica Kincaid’s story, “Girl,” Kincaid introduces a mother lecturing her daughter on the duties and responsibilities of being a respected woman. The mother explains ways in which the girl should appropriately perform particular tasks and expected mannerisms of women in varied environments. The girl is instructed on how to correctly clean house, do laundry, prepare meals, and treat her spouse. The mother also offers advice that is seemingly based on her own learned superstitions. This is demonstrated by the line, “this is how to throw back a fish you don’t like, and that way something bad won’t fall on you” (Kincaid 17).…
Daughter and mother relationship is an endless topic for many writers. They are meant to share the bond of love and care for each other. In the real world, however, their relationship is not as successful as it ought to be. The stories "How to Talk to Your Mother" and "I Stand Here Ironing" are the examples of this conflict. Lorrie Moore is distinguished for the clever wordplay, irony and sardonic humor of her fiction. "How to Talk to Your mother" is a short story in her collection Self-Help. It is about a failed relationship of a daughter and her mother over time. Similarly, Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing" portrays powerfully the economic and domestic burdens a poor woman faced, as well as the responsibility and powerlessness she feels over her child's life. Both stories have the same theme, but each has different technique, and the conflicts from the characters are opposite.…
First I set out the items she needed and made sure she were safely with reach. This included allowing her to make her own choice of toiletries and clothes.…
The list in the story, Girl by Jamaica Kincaid, would not be accepted in todays modern society. The list in Girl, is in stark contrast with how women regard themselves today and can only be viewed as very undermining of what it means to be a woman and what a woman is supposed to be like. The short story consists of a list of what a woman should strive to be. During the time period of the book, women did not have a role outside the home.…
In “Girl” a young adolescent girl’s mother does not like her daughters actions, and therefore corrects her daughter. Both characters are influenced by what society says…