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Nikita Wilkins
Professor Jacobs
English 132
September 20, 2017
Girl

In Girl by Jamaica Kincaid, the reader meets the character of an unnamed young girl in

conversation with her mother, who is the narrator. Throughout the story, she say things like how

to act and how to cook. It is a long list of what to do and what not to do. This story points out

how mothers have to be hard on their daughters so they dont have to go through what theyve

been through. Through narration and, point of view, and character the reader is able to

understand the connection between mothers and daughters.

The narrator speaks in the second person. The narrator is listing rules and commands for

the protagonist to follow. The narrator has the story set in the present. or future tense. The verb

tense reads as commands for the protagonist. For the most part, the language is standard;

however, there are instances when she spoke about specific things in Caribbean culture.

Although the narrator is not an identified character, he or she has a major part in the story. The

narrator does most of the talking and rarely allows the other character to speak at all.

The narrator never speaks to the reader directly, but the commands seem that they are

directed towards any girl, which includes the main character. Based on the text, the narrator also

believes that the rules will make her into a better woman. We dont know any thoughts of the

characters except the protagonist who is focused on not singing benna in Sunday school

(Kincaid 128). The narrator does not shift focus until the last two lines of the text. She goes from

listing the commands to stating the purpose of the commands, which is to be the type of woman

that the baker would let squeeze the bread. In other words, she wants her to be seen respectfully.
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The response of the protagonist at the end of the story notes that the narrator's true

message is not being received. The protagonist states that she wasnt sure if the baker would

allow her to squeeze the bread, but the narrator states that following the rules would be the way

to be the kind of woman that the baker would let near the bread.

The protagonist is the young lady whothat is recalling all of the rules that she is hearing.

Although she is never named, the social rules that she is being given indicate that she is a lady.

Her most distinctive traits include being passive. While all the rules are given to her, she

doesnt speak up for herself very much. She makes one statement that she doesnt sing benna,

but says very little about the other things (Kincaid 128). She seems to want to make whoever is

speaking to her proud, but seemingly is up against a large task to follow all the rules. The biggest

conflict is how she will be able to follow all of the rules.

There is not another character other than the narrator. The narrator is the person who is

giving her all of the rules to follow. The rules are written as one huge sentence, which makes the

reader feel overwhelmed with all the things to follow. When she states this is how you smile to

someone you dont like too much; this is how you smile to someone you dont like at all; this is

how you smile to someone you like completely (Kincaid 128). Also, that makes the narrator

feel like the antagonist is clearly the narrator. Because of the lack of punctuation and fact that the

protagonist rarely gets a word in, the reader starts to strongly sympathize with the protagonist. I

began to feel that some of the rules were unfair.

In Girl the mom is trying to train her daughter on how to be a prefect young lady. The

narrator speaks constantly while the daughter is stuck listening. I think Jamaica Kincaid wrote

this story because this might be how her mother was on her when she was young. She wants

teenagers today to know mothers back then were hard on them and todays mothers are not the
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same as they were back then. I agree that girls should be perfect and show respect for themselves

in every way because if they dont nobody will respect them. If they do carry themselves the way

the mother was explaining in Girl, people would respect them more.
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Works Cited

Kincaid, Jamaica. Girl. The Norton Introduction to Literature, edited by Kelly J. Mays, W. W.

Norton, 2017, pp. 127-129