The parents are the most important cornerstone in the rearing of a child. They are the ones who lay the foundation for how the child will behave in the future. All parents wants their child to become a respectable and resourceful adult in society in the future. Therefore, the parents must strike a balance between being strict and soft, because there may be consequences if you are too much of one than the other. If you are too rigorous, the child may in the future be confined, or perhaps even end up in a bad environment, as children often do things they should not. Conversely, if you are too soft against the child, the child has a free rein and thus do things that can be fatal in the future. Therefore, it is normal that the parents share the tasks, and usually it is the father who takes care of the strict role, while the mother is the soft and caring parent. However, it can of course differ from family to family and mainly it depends on the culture you come from.
“Mount Pleasant” is a short story written by Marie-Louise Buxton and published in 2005. The short story is about a young girl named Elizabeth and her everyday life. Elizabeth and her family have moved to the town Mount Pleasant. She has found a picture of an unknown boy, which she shows to her mother. The mother does not like the photo and yells at Elizabeth. Later that night, Elizabeth feels that someone has sat in her bed, and that makes her very scared.
The narrative is expressed through Elizabeth, and therefore it is an explicit first person point of view and narration. It is a non-omniscient narrator, because the narrator only knows her own thoughts. She is also the main character, and it is almost like a diary of her. The narrative language in the text is informal and very childish, with various infantile words like “Mammy” (mommy) or “Babby” (baby). This is because we get the story told through a child’s eyes and her thoughts.
The childish narrative technique gives us