Girl Jamaica Kincaid Analysis

Most parents impose very high expectations on their children. While some expect their sons to become professionals in respected fields, others encourage their daughters to find good husbands. The parents impose these expectations without consulting their children. In most situations, the expectations of the parent deviate from the dreams of the child. This is what becomes evident when one reads Sandra Cisneros’ Only Daughter and Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue. In these short stories, the expectations that the parents of the narrators elicit mixed reactions. The expectations of the narrators’ parents hold them back from attaining personal goals while causing them to desperately desire approval and eventually accepting and embracing their parents..

The short story “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid was a bittersweet warning from a mother to her daughter. The reader is experiencing the viewpoint of the protagonist through the soliloquy of her mother’s instructions that batter her like bugs smacking the

Why compare Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” and Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” Daughter and mother relationship is an endless topic for many writers. They meant to share the bond of love and care for each other. Nevertheless, in the real world their relationship is not as successful as it ought to be. The stories “Girl” and “I Stand Here Ironing” are examples of this conflict. The author of the short story “Girl” Jamaica Kincaid was born and raised up to the age of seventeen in Antigua, a former colony of Great Britain. In her short story “Girl”, Kincaid presents the experience of being young and female in a poor country. The story is structured as a single sentence of advice that a mother gives to her daughter. The mother expresses her

Are parents a good source of teaching? Can they help their children learn a valuable lesson? In the two stories “Home” by Anton Chekhov and “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes the main characters Yevgeny Petrovitch( “Home” ) and the Mother( “Mother to Son” ) are good examples of this. In the two stories there is many similarities and differences, one similar thing is both characters are trying to teach their son a life lesson. One difference is they are both teaching a different lesson. The Mother from “ Mother to Son” is trying to teach her son to never give up. Yevgeny Petrovitch from “Home” is telling his son not to smoke. Both main characters are trying to teach their sons a life lesson.

In a 1990 novel by Jamaica Kincaid, the narrator is discussing her homesickness from a new future to come. She finds that, “Everything . . . was such a good idea that I could imagine I would grow used to it and like it very much, but at first it was all so new that I had to smile with my mouth turned down at the corners.” The narrator is trying to overcome her loneliness and confusion when faced with a new atmosphere and environment. This new situation shows that the narrator's sense of self is being overloaded by this entirely different world making her realize, “I was no longer in a tropical zone and I felt cold inside and out, the first time such a situation had come over me.”

Parental instincts do not come from nowhere; parents are always over their children’s shoulders and telling their children what to do. Eric Fromm tries to explain these parental instincts in The Art of Loving, and the parental theories described by Fromm can be applied to stories such as “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid. Kincaid’s short story, along with portraying Fromm’s maternal love theory, supports the Madonna/whore syndrome, which was theorized by Sigmund Freud.

Parents often make it hard for a child to grow up. They tend to differentiate the actions of both genders. Females however, get treated differently and are told what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. Kincaid’s short story “Girl” illustrates how cultural conditioning relates to the norms of society. The dialogue in this story between the mother and child is quite common in real life, but it seemed as if the mother was telling her child what was right from wrong instead of showing her exactly what to do. The mother states, “Don’t sing benna in Sunday School”

First, in the article Brothers by Jon Scieszka, the brothers are stress free and living their life to the fullest. Jon says, “That's what my mom used to tell me and Jim - "Watch your brothers." So we did. We watched Jeff roll off the couch. We watched Brian dig in the plants and eat the dirt. We watched Gregg lift up the lid on the toilet and splash around in the water.” This quotation is significant to the readers as it tells them to do whatever makes them happy even if it is kind of silly. Teenagers are too young to worry or overthink about simple things that results to anxiety and they tend to forget the essence of life. Moreover, if a person stop worrying about the things and be optimistic, everything will be perfectly fine especially if the reader has a lovely family that will encourage and support him or her no matter challenges life brings. Second, in the article, To a Sad Daughter by Michael Ondaatje, the father says, “I don’t care if you risk your life to angry goalies creatures with webbed feet. You can enter their caves and castles their glass laboratories.” Indeed, this quotation is significant to the readers as the father tells her daughter to take chances and do not be afraid of what future holds. This is a sign of optimism because the father is encouraging his daughter to achieve her goals. Also, he believes that his daughter is good and if failure happens, she

Introduction: In “Girl by Jamaica Kincaid” and “If by Rudyard Kipling” are two poems that a girl and boy that have a odd lifestyle. “Girl” is about a girl who has a mother that wants her to do anything that her daughter doesn’t want to do and in “If” there is a boy that has a father that is encouraging and he is being told stuff by his dad. They both have a similar thing, they are both poems and their endings aren’t the same, different.

Books depict mothers as nurturing housewives while fathers work at their jobs and provide for the family. A study of three hundred books showed that “In 300 books, only 10 mothers worked outside the home” (Winconek 1). This statistic clearly reveals that the books inaccurately represent the parental situation in all homes; However, the children expect truth from books, so they assume that the books represent how a perfect family should be. The narrowly defined roles affect how the children view their own opportunities growing up. A young girl may come to believe that she must grow up to live in the house and care for children despite her dreams of going to space or becoming a lawyer. Similarly, a young tenderhearted boy may feel pressured to become a business associate in order to provide for the family, but he sees his children only once a week. Children should grow up believing that they can have any career that they desire in the future; limiting the opportunities for women or men in books leads to children limiting their future goals. Additionally, the books exhibit and promote emotional stereotypes as well as financial. Mothers traditionally take the part of disciplinarian to the children; they

In the short story “Girl,” the daughter was being taught by the mother to prepare her for the future, and to make sure she meets her society’s expectations. It is possible that the daughter might get married in the future, because in the story the mother says “this is how you bully a man,” and “this is how a man bullies you.” In this quote the mother means to say what her daughter is allowed to do to her husband and what her husband can do to her. Another evidence of her daughter getting married is when the mother says “this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child.“ The mother is instructing her daughter on how to abort a child, in case it was a bad moment to be pregnant during her marriage. Finally,

Compare and Contrast If by Rudyard Kipling and Girl by Jamaica Kincaid are two poems about parents talking to their children. In If a father is talking to his son. He is telling his son how to succeed in life. In Girl a mother is telling her daughter how to live on her own.

Because man has always sought to achieve not only greatness through deeds, and respect through their benevolence, it cannot be achieved without parental guidance. These two writings tell that story although they were not written at the same time or in the same place.

The way parents raise children may affect them while growing up and this will be transferred over generations and it’s most likely to never end. Being punished as a young child, life seemed harsh and uneasy. The way parents would yell at you, tell you what to do, what not to do, and they always seemed to have gotten in the way of doing what us children wanted to do but it emotionally affects the personality of children while growing up for good or bad. In the poem “This Be The Verse” by Philip Larkin, Larkin expresses his emotions in a strong and direct lenguage towards his parents and the way they judge and blame him for it’s mistakes. His strong lenguage demonstrates with no doubt us that parents have a negative effect on their children and it affects them drastically. Junot Diaz's short story “Fiesta, 1980” gives an insight into the everyday life of a lower class family, a family with a troubled young boy, Yunior and a strong, abusive father, Papi. Bad parent-child relationships could lead to depression, low self-steem and children could be more prone to criminal behavior. Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl” illustrates gender discrimination, receiving the instructions from her mother on how to behave and act to not be judge.It illustrates the high level of submissive in women’s there was in her culture.

As a woman in the 21st century, there are still many misconceptions of what we are expected to be. The way we have been stereotyped has made it difficult for us to have a level playing field in the workplace. Preconceived notions that have been passed down by generations of women, from grandmothers to mothers to daughters have taken hold not only as our beliefs as women, but what men also expect us to be.