Layered Points of View
Not every story has a straightforward first- or third-person point of view. Often
a novel is told through multiple layered perspectives. In her novel A Crime in the
Neighborhood, Suzanne Berne tells the story from the viewpoint of a woman, Marsha,
20
who recalls a violent crime that occurred when she was an adolescent. In the following
passage, Marsha is remembering an encounter between a suspicious neighbor
and her mother, who is waiting for guests to arrive for a barbecue.
“I think I would like a little more wine, thank you,” [my mother] added after a
moment, and held out her cup.
As he bent to refill her cup, their eyes met and she smiled up at him. “It’s still
early,” she told him. “They might still come.”
“Yes,” he said.
Two stories above them, I propped my chin on the back of a hand, leaning
on the windowsill. Had she remembered to turn off the burner from under the pan
of hamburger meat? Had she noticed, on her way out, if the freezer door was
ajar?
When I look back I don’t have trouble understanding how my mother got
herself into Mr. Green’s yard that night. All the time she had been preparing
dinner she must have been glancing out the kitchen window, watching him as
he sat alone in his unsteady chair, stiff khaki shirt fading into the early evening.
I suppose it was the cumulative effect of that vision that finally made her fumble
toward the door as if the hamburger meat had already burned, as if the whole
house were filled with smoke. Because as I recall it now there was something
dire in the sight of Mr. Green that evening. Something powerful enough to send
my mother rushing from the house, barefoot half-dressed. . . . What must have
made my mother’s eyes sting that summer evening, what must have made her
almost run to the kitchen door, had to be the fury of mortal fear — the fear that
comes from understanding all at once that you are by yourself in a vast world,
and that one day something worse than anything that has ever happened before
will happen.
[1998]
The narrator begins recounting the story through dialogue between her mother
and Mr. Green, dialogue that the narrator reconstructs from memory but presents as
though it were just occurring. Her narrative voice intrudes from “[t]wo stories above
them,” as she remembers herself as a young girl looking down from an upstairs window,
where she watched the encounter and wondered if her mother “remembered to
turn off the burner from under the pan of hamburger meat.” In the next paragraph,
the narrator reminds us that an older, more mature person is telling the story as a
flashback: “When I look back . . .” What follows is hardly the consciousness of the
young girl at the windowsill but that of an adult who is remembering the story and
reflecting on how it influenced her.
Another layered technique is to introduce a story using another story, called
a narrative frame or frame story. A narrative frame establishes who is telling the
main story and under what circumstances. Narrative frames usually create a shift in
perspective. If the frame story is told in first-person present tense, perhaps the main
story will be told as a flashback, or in third person as something that happened to
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someone else. When a frame is used to pass on a secondhand story, the reader is left
to wonder if the narrator is getting everything right, or if he or she is misremembering
or embellishing the tale. Mary Shelley uses a narrative frame for her novel
Frankenstein. The primary narrator is Captain Robert Walton, who is on a scientific
mission above the Arctic Circle to “tread a land never before imprinted by the foot
of man.” In letters written to his sister, he retells the story being told to him by “the
stranger” his crew found stranded on the ice, one Victor Frankenstein.
August 19th, 17 — .
Yesterday the stranger said to me, “You may easily perceive, Captain Walton,
that I have suffered great and unparalleled misfortunes. I had determined, at one
time, that the memory of these evils should die with me; but you have won me
to alter my determination. You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did;
and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to
sting you, as mine has been. I do not know that the relation of my disasters will
be useful to you; yet, when I reflect that you are pursuing the same course, exposing
yourself to the same dangers which have rendered me what I am, I imagine
that you may deduce an apt moral from my tale; one that may direct you if you
succeed in your undertaking, and console you in case of failure. Prepare to hear
of occurrences which are usually deemed marvellous. Were we among the tamer
scenes of nature, I might fear to encounter your unbelief, perhaps your ridicule;
but many things will appear possible in these wild and mysterious regions, which
would provoke the laughter of those unacquainted with the ever-varied powers of
nature: — nor can I doubt but that my tale conveys in its series internal evidence
of the truth of the events of which it is composed.”
You may easily imagine that I was much gratified by the offered communication;
yet I could not endure that he should renew his grief by a recital of his
misfortunes. I felt the greatest eagerness to hear the promised narrative, partly
from curiosity, and partly from a strong desire to ameliorate his fate, if it were in
my power. I expressed these feelings in my answer.
“I thank you,” he replied, “for your sympathy, but it is useless; my fate is nearly
fulfilled. I wait but for one event, and then I shall repose in peace. I understand
your feeling,” continued he, perceiving that I wished to interrupt him; “but you are
mistaken, my friend, if thus you will allow me to name you; nothing can alter my destiny:
listen to my history, and you will perceive how irrevocably it is determined.”
He then told me, that he would commence his narrative the next day when
I should be at leisure. This promise drew from me the warmest thanks. I have
resolved every night, when I am not imperatively occupied by my duties, to
record, as nearly as possible in his own words, what he has related during the
day. If I should be engaged, I will at least make notes. This manuscript will doubtless
afford you the greatest pleasure: but to me, who know him, and who hear it
from his own lips, with what interest and sympathy shall I read it in some future
day! Even now, as I commence my task, his full-toned voice swells in my ears;
his lustrous eyes dwell on me with all their melancholy sweetness; I see his thin
hand raised in animation, while the lineaments of his face are irradiated by the
soul within. Strange and harrowing must be his story; frightful the storm which
embraced the gallant vessel on its course, and wrecked it — thus!
[1818]
When a narrative frame is used, there is frequently a thematic link between the
frame and the main narrative. In this case, both stories are about men who “seek for
knowledge and wisdom.” With a frame of this sort, notice how many different ways
this story gets told:
• Walton writes a letter.
• Walton quotes Frankenstein.
• Walton comments on Frankenstein’s story.
• Walton paraphrases what Frankenstein said.
This complex storytelling technique effectively draws a connection between Walton
and Frankenstein, between the frame and the main narrative.
The following questions will help guide your analysis of point of view:
• Is the point of view first person (I) or third person (he, she, it)?
• Is the narrator a participant or an observer in the story?
• If the point of view is first person, how reliable is the narrator?
• If the perspective is third person, is the narrator omniscient or limited omniscient?
• Does the point of view shift during the course of the story? If so, what is the
impact?
• If the piece has a narrative frame, how does it relate thematically to the main
narrative?
• ACTIVITY •
The following passage is from Colm Tóibín’s novel Brooklyn, which takes
place in the mid-twentieth century. Discuss how the setting, as told from
the third-person limited omniscient point of view, characterizes the narrator,
a young woman who has recently immigrated to Brooklyn from a small
town in Ireland.
From Brooklyn
COLM TÓIBÍN
She liked the morning air and the quietness of these few leafy streets, streets
that had shops only on the corners, streets where people lived, where there
were three or four apartments in each house and where she passed women
accompanying their children to school as she went to work. As she walked
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along, however, she knew she was getting close to the real world, which had
wider streets and more traffic. Once she arrived at Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn
began to feel like a strange place to her, with so many gaps between buildings
and so many derelict buildings. And then suddenly, when she arrived at Fulton
Street, there would be so many people crowding to cross the street, and in such
dense clusters, that on the first morning she thought a fight had broken out or
someone was injured and they had gathered to get a good view.
[2009]
Symbol
Literary texts often contain symbols — objects, places, events, even characters — that
carry more than literal meaning and therefore point the way to the meaning of the
work as a whole. Symbols operate in fiction and drama much as they do in poetry,
which we discussed in Chapter 2. It’s important to avoid making your study of a
short story, novel, or play just a hunt for common symbols. Symbols work by association
and always fit into the context of the work as a whole, so be careful not to jump
to conclusions. There is no secret code that says that water always symbolizes rebirth,
for instance. Water might symbolize rebirth in one work but could symbolize purity
or infinite possibility in another. Other symbols are unique to specific texts, such as
the green light at the end of the dock in The Great Gatsby (p. 25). Symbols are most
often part of setting. Look back at the second paragraph from Poe’s short story “The
Masque of the Red Death” (p. 67). The clock is described as having an especially
dramatic and unsettling hourly chime. Everyone stops; the musicians are uneasy and
the waltzers pause. The sound is unusual, not harmonious. Clearly, the clock and its
chime symbolize the inevitability of time’s passing and, in this case, the reality that
time is running out regardless of how much these people try to hide from death.
Sometimes, however, symbols help develop a character. In the story “Clothes” by
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, the clothing the main character chooses symbolizes different
phases of her life. When she leaves India to travel to America for her arranged
marriage, she and her parents select an appropriate sari, the traditional dress:
I wanted a blue one for the journey, because blue is the color of possibility, the
color of the sky through which I would be traveling. But Mother said there must be
red in it because red is the color of luck for married women.
The colors are symbolic of how the narrator views her new life. Later, when she
becomes Americanized, not just the color but also her choice of clothing symbolize
her new identity:
I’m wearing a pair of jeans now, marveling at the curves of my hips and thighs,
which have always been hidden under the flowing lines of my saris. . . . The jeans
come with a close-fitting T-shirt which . . . is sunrise-orange — the color, I decide,
of joy, of my new American life.
The following questions will help guide your analysis of symbols:
• What objects does the writer seem to emphasize, through description, repetition,
or placement in the story?
• What might be symbolic about the setting? What characters or aspects of a
character might be symbolic? What events might be symbolic?
• Is there a recurring pattern, or motif, of images or events?
• How does your symbolic interpretation fit with the context of the story?
• ACTIVITY •
Think of a movie that includes a symbol. Discuss what the symbol means
and how it connects to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Theme
When we talk about the way a work of literature raises a question or explores an issue
in addition to telling a story, we are talking about theme. The rich works you read
in school usually have several themes, which are revealed through the piece’s plot,
character, setting, point of view, and symbols.
Identifying and articulating themes is not a simple process. Literary critic
Northrop Frye used the term “the educated imagination” to describe the intersection
of skills and knowledge with creativity. Think about the previous sections of this
chapter — as well as Chapters 1 and 2 — as having educated your imagination so that
now you’re ready to uncover the themes of complex novels, plays, short stories, and
even poems. As you come up with a theme for a piece of writing, you are inevitably
interpreting it; thus, the theme you find may not be the same one others find. There
can be many themes in a work — not just one “answer” waiting to be discovered.
Let’s put some of these ideas to work by examining the themes of a short story
by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Edward P. Jones.
The First Day
EDWARD P. JONES
On an otherwise unremarkable September morning, long before I learned to
be ashamed of my mother, she takes my hand and we set off down New Jersey
Avenue to begin my very first day of school. I am wearing a checkeredlike blueand-
green cotton dress, and scattered about these colors are bits of yellow and
white and brown. My mother has uncharacteristically spent nearly an hour on my
hair that morning, plaiting and replaiting so that now my scalp tingles. Whenever
I turn my head quickly, my nose fills with the faint smell of Dixie Peach hair grease.
The smell is somehow a soothing one now and I will reach for it time and time
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again before the morning ends. All the plaits, each with a blue barrette near the
tip and each twisted into an uncommon sturdiness, will last until I go to bed that
night, something that has never happened before. My stomach is full of milk and
oatmeal sweetened with brown sugar. Like everything else I have on, my pale
green slip and underwear are new, the underwear having come three to a plastic
package with a little girl on the front who appears to be dancing. Behind my
ears, my mother, to stop my whining, has dabbed the stingiest bit of her gardenia
perfume, the last present my father gave her before he disappeared into memory.
Because I cannot smell it, I have only her word that the perfume is there. I am
also wearing yellow socks trimmed with thin lines of black and white around the
tops. My shoes are my greatest joy, black patent-leather miracles, and when one
is nicked at the toe later that morning in class, my heart will break.
I am carrying a pencil, a pencil sharpener, and a small ten-cent tablet with a
black-and-white speckled cover. My mother does not believe that a girl in kindergarten
needs such things, so I am taking them only because of my insistent whining
and because they are presents from our neighbors, Mary Keith and Blondelle
Harris. Miss Mary and Miss Blondelle are watching my two younger sisters until
my mother returns. The women are as precious to me as my mother and sisters.
Out playing one day, I have overheard an older child, speaking to another child,
call Miss Mary and Miss Blondelle a word that is brand new to me. This is my
mother: When I say the word in fun to one of my sisters, my mother slaps me
across the mouth and the word is lost for years and years.
All the way down New Jersey Avenue, the sidewalks are teeming with children.
In my neighborhood, I have many friends, but I see none of them as my
mother and I walk. We cross New York Avenue, we cross Pierce Street, and we
cross L and K, and still I see no one who knows my name. At I Street, between
New Jersey Avenue and Third Street, we enter Seaton Elementary School, a timeworn,
sad-faced building across the street from my mother’s church, Mt. Carmel
Baptist.
Just inside the front door, women out of the advertisements in Ebony are
greeting other parents and children. The woman who greets us has pearls thick
as jumbo marbles that come down almost to her navel, and she acts as if she
had known me all my life, touching my shoulder, cupping her hand under my
chin. She is enveloped in a perfume that I only know is not gardenia. When,
in answer to her question, my mother tells her that we live at 1227 New Jersey
Avenue, the woman first seems to be picturing in her head where we live. Then
she shakes her head and says that we are at the wrong school, that we should
be at Walker-Jones.
My mother shakes her head vigorously. “I want her to go here,” my mother
says. “If I’da wanted her someplace else, I’da took her there.” The woman continues
to act as if she has known me all my life, but she tells my mother that we live
beyond the area that Seaton serves. My mother is not convinced and for several
more minutes she questions the woman about why I cannot attend Seaton. For
as many Sundays as I can remember, perhaps even Sundays when I was in her
5
womb, my mother has pointed across I Street to Seaton as we come and go to
Mt. Carmel. “You gonna go there and learn about the whole world.” But one of
the guardians of that place is saying no, and no again. I am learning this about
my mother: The higher up on the scale of respectability a person is — and teachers
are rather high up in her eyes — the less she is liable to let them push her around.
But finally, I see in her eyes the closing gate, and she takes my hand and we leave
the building. On the steps, she stops as people move past us on either side.
“Mama, I can’t go to school?”
She says nothing at first, then takes my hand again and we are down the
steps quickly and nearing New Jersey Avenue before I can blink. This is my
mother: She says, “One monkey don’t stop no show.”
Walker-Jones is a larger, newer school and I immediately like it because
of that. But it is not across the street from my mother’s church, her rock, one of
her connections to God, and I sense her doubts as she absently rubs her thumb
over the back of her hand. We find our way to the crowded auditorium where
gray metal chairs are set up in the middle of the room. Along the wall to the
left are tables and other chairs. Every chair seems occupied by a child or adult.
Somewhere in the room a child is crying, a cry that rises above the buzz-talk of
so many people. Strewn about the floor are dozens and dozens of pieces of white
paper, and people are walking over them without any thought of picking them up.
And seeing this lack of concern, I am all of a sudden afraid.
“Is this where they register for school?” my mother asks a woman at one of
the tables.
The woman looks up slowly as if she has heard this question once too often.
She nods. She is tiny, almost as small as the girl standing beside her. The woman’s
hair is set in a mass of curlers and all of those curlers are made of paper money,
here a dollar bill, there a five-dollar bill. The girl’s hair is arrayed in curls, but some
of them are beginning to droop and this makes me happy. On the table beside the
woman’s pocketbook is a large notebook, worthy of someone in high school, and
looking at me looking at the notebook, the girl places her hand possessively on it. In
her other hand she holds several pencils with thick crowns of additional erasers.
“These the forms you gotta use?” my mother asks the woman, picking up a
few pieces of the paper from the table. “Is this what you have to fill out?”
The woman tells her yes, but that she need fill out only one.
“I see,” my mother says, looking about the room. Then: “Would you help me
with this form? That is, if you don’t mind.”
The woman asks my mother what she means.
“This form. Would you mind helpin me fill it out?”
The woman still seems not to understand.
“I can’t read it. I don’t know how to read or write, and I’m askin you to help
me.” My mother looks at me, then looks away. I know almost all of her looks, but
this one is brand new to me. “Would you help me, then?”
The woman says Why sure, and suddenly she appears happier, so much
more satisfied with everything. She finishes the form for her daughter and my
ELEMENTS OF FICTION 87
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mother and I step aside to wait for her. We find two chairs nearby and sit. My
mother is now diseased, according to the girl’s eyes, and until the moment her
mother takes her and the form to the front of the auditorium, the girl never stops
looking at my mother. I stare back at her. “Don’t stare,” my mother says to me.
“You know better than that.”
Another woman out of the Ebony ads takes the woman’s child away. Now,
the woman says upon returning, let’s see what we can do for you two.
My mother answers the questions the woman reads off the form. They start
with my last name, and then on to the first and middle names. This is school, I
think. This is going to school. My mother slowly enunciates each word of my
name. This is my mother: As the questions go on, she takes from her pocketbook
document after document, as if they will support my right to attend school, as if
she has been saving them up for just this moment. Indeed, she takes out more
papers than I have ever seen her do in other places: my birth certificate, my baptismal
record, a doctor’s letter concerning my bout with chicken pox, rent receipts,
records of immunization, a letter about our public assistance payments, even her
marriage license—every single paper that has anything even remotely to do with
my five-year-old life. Few of the papers are needed here, but it does not matter
and my mother continues to pull out the documents with the purposefulness of a
magician pulling out a long string of scarves. She has learned that money is the
beginning and end of everything in this world, and when the woman finishes,
my mother offers her fifty cents, and the woman accepts it without hesitation. My
mother and I are just about the last parent and child in the room.
My mother presents the form to a woman sitting in front of the stage, and the
woman looks at it and writes something on a white card, which she gives to my
mother. Before long, the woman who has taken the girl with the drooping curls
appears from behind us, speaks to the sitting woman, and introduces herself to my
mother and me. She’s to be my teacher, she tells my mother. My mother stares.
We go into the hall, where my mother kneels down to me. Her lips are
quivering. “I’ll be back to pick you up at twelve o’clock. I don’t want you to go
nowhere. You just wait right here. And listen to every word she say.” I touch her
lips and press them together. It is an old, old game between us. She puts my hand
down at my side, which is not part of the game. She stands and looks a second
at the teacher, then she turns and walks away. I see where she has darned one
of her socks the night before. Her shoes make loud sounds in the hall. She passes
through the doors and I can still hear the loud sounds of her shoes. And even when
the teacher turns me toward the classrooms and I hear what must be the singing
and talking of all the children in the world, I can still hear my mother’s footsteps
above it all.
[1992]
To uncover the themes of a story, you will have to rely on your observations, find
portions of the work that seem significant or meaningful, and then explain why you
think they are significant. Although literary elements often work together to create
20
a theme, we’re going to go element by element, in order to demonstrate a relatively
systematic way of looking for themes.
Let’s start with the plot of this story, which is pretty straightforward: an uneducated
mother takes her daughter to the first day of kindergarten; they are refused
admission to one school and have to go to another, where a kindly person assists
the mother in filling out the necessary forms; the mother leaves the child at school,
telling her to pay close attention to the teacher. That’s pretty much it. Yet within that
plot, we can see quite a few events that seem to have deeper significance and could
point toward possible themes. For instance, why would a mother who cannot read
do her utmost, overcoming obstacle after obstacle, to get her child into school? This
seems a bit paradoxical, more than a little heartwarming, and definitely important. Is
the author’s message that perhaps the people who truly understand the importance
of an education are the ones who haven’t had the benefit of one?
Who are the characters in this story? The main characters are the mother and the
daughter. The other characters are all female, mostly teachers. Where are the men in
this story? That is definitely a question worth exploring, but let’s stick to the mother
and the daughter for now. How does the daughter change or develop because of the
action of the plot? Think about the title: “The First Day.” We can ask: the first day of
what? Literally, it’s the first day of school, but it is also the first day that the narrator is
leaving her family and entering society as a whole. It’s the first day that her education
and her fate are being transferred from her mother to the female teachers, who are
minor but important characters in this story. These observations suggest a number
of themes, especially the importance of community in raising a child.
The story’s setting is a poor neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and we’re given
details about the school the mother wants her daughter to attend — the school that
is directly across from her church. Why is the proximity of the church important to
the setting? How does it reveal a theme? The narrator tells us that the church is very
important to her mother — it is her “rock” — so it’s clear that the mother wants the
daughter to go to the nearby school because it is familiar, safe, protected, and in a
community she trusts. This aspect of the setting reinforces the theme we uncovered
when looking at character: community is important in raising a child. But it also goes
further, speaking to the mother’s anxiety about letting her daughter go.
Point of view can often be a difficult platform for interpretation, but in this
story, it is especially interesting. The narrator is the daughter, recalling the incident
from the vantage point of adulthood. But the narrator is more specific about her
point of view. She says that these events occurred “long before [she] learned to be
ashamed of [her] mother” (para. 1). The word “learned” seems significant, given
the context of this story about education. We think of education as being “book
learning,” but it’s clear that some part of the narrator’s education has involved “learning”
to be ashamed of her mother. Yet as she’s telling this story, she does not seem
ashamed; she seems proud of her mother’s heroic journey, proud that her mother
overcame so many obstacles in order to make sure her daughter had a bright future.
So one theme might involve the changing perspectives we have regarding our parents:
When we are young, we think they are strong and infallible, but we grow to see
ELEMENTS OF FICTION 89
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their flaws as we become part of the world rather than just part of a family; it takes
time to come back around to respect and appreciate all the things our parents have
done on our behalf.
Not every story operates through symbols, and although this short piece may not
have many, the narrator’s shoes could certainly be symbolic. She says, “My shoes are my
greatest joy, black patent-leather miracles, and when one is nicked at the toe later that
morning in class, my heart will break” (para. 1). Perhaps the fate of these shoes mirrors
her relationship with her mother. Before going out into the world, she is proud of her
mother, yet in the process of going to school, meeting other people, and learning new
things, just like the shiny shoes, her mother’s image gets nicked. Perhaps that change is
what really breaks her heart. So, one theme might be that on the first day of school, we
are letting go of our parents just as much as they are letting go of us.
As you can see, as you consider themes, you often move beyond the text to draw
conclusions about the real world, what we called “extension” in Chapter 1. “The
First Day,” for example, suggests something about the role of education in our lives
that goes beyond this particular five-year-old’s first day in kindergarten. Isn’t this
story really about the role education can play in parent-child relationships, when
the child’s education outpaces that of the parent? Maybe Jones is asking us to think
about what happened later, as the narrator aged, was successful at school, went on to
college. Her mother may be one hundred percent supportive of her daughter’s education.
Yet, those very opportunities can divide and separate the two, as the daughter’s
experiences diverge from those of her mother. The narrator is looking back with
obvious love and appreciation for her mother, yet Jones does not give us the story
of what took place between “the first day” and the point from which the narrator
remembers it.
There is no magic formula for finding a novel, play, or short story’s themes other
than observation and interpretation — and, of course, rereading. Nevertheless, here
are a few suggestions to keep in mind as you try to articulate themes.
1. Subject and theme are not the same. The subject of Jones’s story may be a
little girl’s first day of school, but the theme is what the work says about the
subject. Thus, you should state a theme as a complete sentence (or two). For
instance, “Once a child enters school, teachers, peers, and society as a whole
take over some of the responsibility for raising that child. While this can
expand a child’s horizons and create opportunities for him or her, it can also
test the bond between parent and child.”
2. Avoid clichés. Even though “love conquers all” may indeed be a theme of
Jones’s story, try to state it in a more original and sophisticated way. Clichés
are lazy statements that ignore the complexity of a literary text.
3. Do not ignore contradictory details. You don’t want to claim, for instance, that
the theme of Jones’s story is about how a little girl came to be ashamed of her
mother, since the mother is portrayed heroically in the story.
4. A theme is not a moral. It may sometimes be tempting to extract “the moral
of the story” (which is likely to be a cliché). Resist! Writers of drama and
fiction — and poetry — work indirectly. If a writer wanted to convey an
idea directly, he or she would write an editorial for a newspaper. Those who
choose to write a literary work do so to explore ideas indirectly through plots,
characters, settings, points of view, symbols, and the like.
5. A literary work almost always has more than one theme. Notice how many themes
we have already discussed for this very short story. It is likely that you will think
of even more as you bring your own ideas and experiences to the piece.
6. Themes can be questions. Author Toni Morrison has said that she does not
write to put forth answers but to explore questions. You’ll read some works
that present an intellectual or moral dilemma, or pose a conundrum that
you are not obligated to answer. Questions “The First Day” poses might be
these: Why must parenting always involve loss? Do those who lack education
value it more than those who take it for granted? When do children begin to
understand and appreciate their parents?
• ACTIVITY •
Read the following short story, and try to articulate at least three possible
themes.
Girl
JAMAICA KINCAID
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; don’t walk
barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your
little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself
a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn’t have gum on it, because that way it won’t
hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true
that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way
that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady
and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don’t sing benna in Sunday
school; you mustn’t speak to wharf-rat boys, not even to give directions; don’t
eat fruits on the street — flies will follow you; but I don’t sing benna on Sundays
at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a button; this is how
to make a buttonhole for the button you have just sewed on; this is how to
hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself
from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how
you iron your father’s khaki shirt so that it doesn’t have a crease; this is
how you iron your father’s khaki pants so that they don’t have a crease; this is
how you grow okra — far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants;
when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes
your throat itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is
ELEMENTS OF FICTION 91
92 CHAPTER 3 • THE BIG PICTURE
how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you
smile to someone you don’t like too much; this is how you smile to someone you
don’t like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how
you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set
a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch;
this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence of
men who don’t know you very well, and this way they won’t recognize immediately
the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day,
even if it is with your own spit; don’t squat down to play marbles — you are
not a boy, you know; don’t pick people’s flowers — you might catch something;
don’t throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; this
is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to
make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how
to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child;
this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don’t like, and
that way something bad won’t fall on you; this is how to bully a man; this is
how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man, and if this doesn’t work there
are other ways, and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving up; this
is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so
that it doesn’t fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread
to make sure it’s fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you
mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the
baker won’t let near the bread?
[1978]
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