In her 1990 novel, Jamacia Kincaid emphasizes the conflict between the narrator’s new environment and her sense of self. The narrator throws herself into a new world that is very different than her home. She said, “...something I took completely for granted, ‘the sun is shining, the air is warm,’ was not so”(lines 34-36). The narrator is amazed that new environments can completely contradict her previous one. Facts she took as absolutes can change simply by her location. Throughout the excerpt, Kincaid shows the narrator’s struggle with her new situation through various literary devices. The author uses certain details like color to emphasize the narrator’s strife. When referring to the sun of her previous home, the narrator calls it “bright sun-yellow,” and when referring to the current one she claims it is a “pale-yellow” sun(lines 18-20). This juxtaposition between bright and pale brings out the narrator’s feelings about the past and the future. Her past was joyful and optimistic, while her future is dreary and uncertain. It is interesting that the author chose to discuss the sun because the sun is the center of our solar system, making it a pivotal element of our lives. This goes to show the sheer magnitude of change for the narrator. Later on, the narrator stated, “If I had to draw a picture of my future then, it would have been a large gray …show more content…
This simile suggests that the narrator was ready to discard her past for a more pleasant future. Immediately following this, the author writes with a dysthymic tone to show the narrator’s qualms with discarding her past. She says, “In the past, the thought of being in my present situation had been a comfort, but now I did not even have this to look forward to…”(lines