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Lucy By Jamaica Lucy Analysis

Decent Essays

In the novel Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid, many postcolonial concerns are present within its context. A prominent concern is foreignness and Lucy’s inability to create an identity through her alienated presence. Through the use of stereotyping, Lucy is immediately disappointed in her new home. Lucy theorizes that the world of the colonized and the colonizer are conflicting. The protagonist is “unhappy,” with her displacement in the colonial stronghold of North America (7). In Lucy, a migrant teenage girl, leaves her home in the West Indies and goes to America. Lucy does this in to discover her own identity and uniqueness. Her struggles for individual liberty and independence mean she must leave her whole family behind, especially her mother, …show more content…

Lucy expresses the turmoil inside of her, describing the drastic differences between them stating “But nothing could change the fact where she saw beautiful flowers I saw sorrow and bitterness” (28). When upon the train with Mariah and the children, the narrator says “The other people sitting down to eat dinner all looked like Mariah’s relatives; the people waiting on them all looked like mine” (30). In describing this scene, the narrator shows the line drawn between her and her employer that she constantly is seen as an outsider, simply a “visitor” in their eyes, and although they may be welcoming, she will always have a different place them then in this world. The author is using setting to help bring these notions and themes to life, the usage of the flowers, snow and train ride also help set the scene of segregation.
In “The Tongue” Lucy’s social class becomes prominent and her treatment as an “outsider” is showcased. When talking to Dinah, Lucy expresses how she never liked her because she always treated her as lesser than. In their first encounter Dinah asks Lucy if she was from the islands and Lucy always wants to tell her off but instead just thinks, “And I was going to say it in a voice that I hoped would make her feel like a piece of nothing, which was the way she made me feel in

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