Jamaica Kincaid And If By Rudyard Kipling

Speaking about the main character, The main character of this poem who is called Clarke is a country boy like how Jim was in My Antonia before achieving better lives. The stories both start out in a similar way as well, they both start out with some kind of reunion of some sort. In My Antonia, Jim is reunited with a old friend of his while in the poem the main character is reunited with her aunt. The setting in similar in the way that they both are set mainly on a farm, where Clarke and Jim both reminisce on their memories and experiences in it. Jim would be remembering the moments he had with Antonia while Clarke would have remembered the memories had with his aunt, both at a young age.

Every day the immigrants went to work and grinded away and made not that much change. This hard work caused indescribable grief, explained by Sinclair, “It was stupefying, brutalizing work; it left her no time to think, no strength for anything.” Also, written in “The Jungle”, Sinclair described Elzbieta and the immigrants experiencing a difficult life and that insensibility is a merciful blessing, “She was part of the machine she tended, and every faculty that was not needed for the machine was doomed to be crushed out of existence. There was only one mercy about the cruel grind-- that it gave her the gift of insensibility.”

Jamaica Kincaid was born on May 25th,1949 as Elaine Potter Richardson in St. Johns, Antigua and grew up in poverty. She and her mother had a close relationship up until she was 9, her mother had 3 sons and started neglecting her. She went to a British school and won a scholarship to the Princess Margaret School. At 13, she was taken out of school to support her step father because he’d become sick. To make money for her family, her mother sent her to the united states at 17 as an Au Pair

A country girl’s reputation often holds high value in her heart which builds a foundation to create tension through small things. In “The Ruined Maid,” the conversational poem between two girls that grew up alongside each other establishes a new view they have of each other over time away

In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, there are many situations where a mockingbird is used to represent innocence. When Atticus says, “Remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” (pg.119), he talks about how mockingbirds only sing for us to enjoy. Harper Lee uses the mockingbird’s death to show innocence being destroyed. In this novel, Boo Radley, Tom Robinson, and Mayella Ewell can be identified as mockingbirds. Boo Radley can be considered a mockingbird because

Frequently in life, it is said that the harmony and relationship between positive and negative must coexist in every situation. To Kill A Mockingbird, a novel written by Harper Lee, tells the story of a young girl, Scout, and her brother Jem, as they grow up in a segregated American south. Their critical coming of age lesson can be seen in the children’s experiences with Mrs. Dubose, an angry, insulting woman who is later revealed as a courageous figure that battles her morphine addiction by her own means. In chapter eleven of To Kill A Mockingbird, Jem acts out against Mrs. Dubose in defense of his father and family through destroying her prized, beautiful camellia bushes. As punishment, Jem’s father Atticus condemns Jem to read to Mrs. Dubose

In the short story “Blackness” by Jamaica Kincaid, the narrator’s consciousness develops through a process of realization that she does not have to choose between the culture imposed on her and her authentic heritage. First, the narrator explains the metaphor “blackness” for the colonization her country that fills her own being and eventually becomes one with it. Unaware of her own nature, in isolation she is “all purpose and industry… as if [she] were the single survivor of a species” (472). Describing the annihilation of her culture, the narrator shows how “blackness” replaced her own culture with the ideology of the colonizers.

In “Girl”, Jamaica Kincaid frames the story of a mother giving advice to her daughter on what it means to be raised as a woman. The short story deals with the experience of being young and female in a poor country. The mother in the story resents and worries about her daughter becoming a woman. The mother gives the girl words of wisdom, and warns her daughter against becoming a slut. Her mother tells her how to do household chores such as how to iron and cook.

In her thought provoking essay “In History,” author Jamaica Kincaid explores the idea of naming things in a historical context through various anecdotes. Kincaid makes a purposeful choice to tell her story non chronologically, beginning with the tale of Columbus, putting her own reflection on plant nomenclature in the middle, and ending with an overview of Carl Linnaeus, the inventor of the plant naming system. This choice gives Kincaid the opportunity to fully vet out each point that she makes, an opportunity she wouldn’t have gotten had she written her essay in chronological order. Throughout each anecdote that Kincaid tells, the theme of names and giving things names is central. Kincaid argues that by giving something a name, one unrightfully takes ownership of it and erases its history.

The idea of gender roles in a society has continuously shaped the lives of everyone affected. Jamaica Kincaid, an African-American writer, uses the oppressive relationship between mother and daughter in order to reveal that domestic expectations of women are universally damaging towards a young girl in a patriarchal society. As the poem progresses, it is quickly inferred that it serves as more than a “to-do list” describing the domestic duties that were expected of Kincaid as a child. Through her experiences, “Girl” portrays the hardships that came with learning to be independent and finding a young girl’s place in an unjust society.

Our past is what shapes us into the person we are today and what we experience is subjective based upon our surroundings, being positive or negative. To put this another way, Chinua Achebe puts forth that the writer's duty is to teach the current generation about the dignity of the past, so that the same mistakes aren’t repeated in the future and so that the stories of the numerous people that are being oppressed are getting heard. The wrongs being done to an individual, for example, Malala Yousafzai and how she fought against the Taliban’s for her education is an exemplary experience of a personal story being told to spread awareness and to teach others about atrocities being carried out in different societies other than our own. Nevertheless,

There are various themes in the book To Kill a Mockingbird (TKAM) by Harper Lee. What stuck out was “Don’t spread lies”. This is my claim because people were spreading rumors about Tom Robinson, and Boo Radley who were both very important characters. The people in this story said Tom had raped Mayella. The people were telling stories about Boo that he had gone to jail when he was little, which caused many people in the town to be afraid of him.

This inference comes from the use of the word “if” meaning “on the condition of”. Therefore, Kipling is stating that if this boy is able to do this he will be a man, if he cannot then he is not a man. This guideline is hard to follow when facing adversity and “the sheer number of obstacles that the speaker suggests his son will have to face attests to the poem's harsh vision of human nature and destiny… the son must meet the challenges proffered by this hostile world with courage and stoicism if he is to live with dignity” (“If”). All the obstacles that

I will be looking over the two short story girl and if and comparing them if is written by rudyard kipling and girl is written by jamaica kincaid. One of the differences is The way they write it. With girl there is no scream and no stanzas it's more like a letter. But in if there is a scream and stanzas just like a poem.

IF tells us the character that man should be brave and hold on to the conviction of their own. No matter other doubt it or not. The poem also talks about the patience and tolerance. That is if other doubt us, we should show patient and tolerant to them and o not hate. There are several sentence can be found In the poem that can show the characters have the spirits that mention above.