Analysis of Five Story Themes - Essay Example

Analysis of 5 Story Themes: “Reflections of a 17-Year Old” by Sylvia Plath, “The Parish and the Hill by Mary Doyle Curran, “A Walk to the Jetty” by Jamaica Kincaid, “Private Language: by Patty Crespo, and “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan For this highly interesting and analytical assignment, I have chosen to connect the following 5 stories; “Reflections of a 17-Year Old” by Sylvia Plath, “The Parish and the Hill by Mary Doyle Curran, “A Walk to the Jetty” by Jamaica Kincaid, “Private Language: by Patty Crespo, and finally, “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan. The reason that I chose to review these 5 stories is because they all share a common theme, that of battling multiple identities as one embarks upon a life, adventure, or career in a new world filled with uncertainty and self-doubt. There will be those who will question the choice of “Reflections of a 17 - Year Old” by Sylvia Plath in the roster of stories. However, I believe that even though the narrative is being done by an American girl who is about to embark on a college life for the first time, it still provides a valuable insight on how a person reaching the age of maturity finds himself or herself battling multiple identities. Although a person is looking forward to the independence that life brings once he reaches college, that person is still uncertain of whether he or she can actually handle the new life he or she is entering into. In a way, the young woman in the essay is speaking of how she is creating a new identity for herself once she enters college, one that will help her adjust to the demands of her new life and in the process, help her develop into a better individual as well. It is this uncertainty and self-doubt that can also be clearly seen in the next story, “A Walk to the Jetty”, that seems to seamlessly connect with the multiple identities issue presented in “Reflections of a 17-Year Old”. In “A Walk to the Jetty” author Jamaica Kincaid shares the story of her leaving her homeland in favor of a higher education abroad. Just like in the previous story, Jamaica is filled with self-doubt at the thought of having to leave all that was familiar to her, including her parents. It is clear that she is totally unprepared for the responsibility of taking charge of her life and dealing with the need to adjust who she is as a person once she reaches the shores of her educational home. Her quest is made even more difficult because she wishes to change her mind about her education abroad at the very last minute. It is almost as if she realizes that she will need to create a new identity for herself in order to handle the demands of her new life. It never occurred to her, before she set foot on the jetty that her life was going to drastically change and she would no longer be able to go back to the life she once knew. She was going to need to change who she was in order to create her new life and she was just unprepared for it. She came to the realization that she valued her old life so much that she was unwilling to let it go. Which is a theme that Patty Crespo, in her essay “Private Language”, comes to examine closely. Anyone who embarks on a new quest in their lives ends up having to create multiple identities. That is the implication made by Ms. Crespo in her essay where she advocates the multiple personality for obvious reasons. It is important, according to her, that one hold on to the heritage of his or her parents, including the mother language of their parents in order to give themselves a unique identity in a world full of people. By keeping in touch with their parents past, they are able to create two personalities for themselves that allows them to be comfortable in the two worlds that they are made to live in by circumstance. Imagine how difficult it would be for a person, a teenager in particular, to be living in the United States but unable to speak to his or her parents because they do not speak the same language. The lack of communication between parent and child, as it existed for some people whom Ms. Crespo cited as examples in her essay, creates a very sad home situation for these people. Unable to communicate with one another, the tendency will be to shy away from the primary identity that a person has, which is the identity the person is known by at home. However, the second identity created for the outside world to enjoy, the one used most often in school and in other public places, takes over as the more dominant personality. Thus creating a type of multiple personality disorder in a person and a sense of shame that they have a prior personality to represent when they do not wish to or are ashamed to do so. It is this particular problem when it comes to multiple identities that comes to the forefront of the generational stories represented in the novel “The Parish and the Hill” by Mary Doyle Curran. The characters in the aforementioned story all represent various struggles in terms of having to deal with their multiple identities in a society that judges a person by the extremes. Either you “are” or you “aren't”. There is no in between for them in their family and their town. The way the generations of characters portray the trials and tribulations of growing up in their town that forces them to deal with their multiple ethnic identities, alienation because of the multiple identities, and the social classes that divide the town. The struggles of the people in this story are not lost upon author Amy Tan who in her short essay “Mother Tongue” also deals with the ups and downs of her multiple identity and the results of having to deal with a mother who refuses to speak English correctly even though she can. In her short story / essay, Ms. Tan explains the horror and shame that she carried because she had a mother who refused to let go of her mother tongue and traditions even though it was making life difficult for her in the country she migrated to, the United States. Her mother felt a certain kind of pride in remaining thoroughly Chinese in her language and ways even though she had been living in the United States for decades already and was perfectly capable of speaking the language properly. It is important to note that in this essay, Ms. Tan has in a way, agreed with the declarations of Ms. Patty Crespo in her own essay about multiple identities. Even though it came later on in her life, Ms. Tan came to embrace her multiple identities and the value of it. She no longer saw her multiple identity as a drawback as the characters did in “The Parish and the Hill”. Instead, she became proud of everything that made her Chinese, and allowed her to communicate with her mother in their own “private language” while also advocating for the empowerment of immigrants in the English tongue. She was in a very unique position to do both and she made sure to not fail in her advocacy. The common theme of multiple identities and the difficulties that come with it is what made the previous 5 readings quite interesting and important to me. Being a person of multiple identities myself, since English is not my native tongue, I could easily identify and take lessons from the assigned course readings. Course readings which, I might add, also helped me to come and understand my own situation as well. Read More