Hi, I'm Rebecca Balcarcel.
Let's talk about style in Jamaica Kincaid's short story, "Girl."
I've been reading "Girl," and I see on the page that it's actually one big
block of type, and as I look more closely I see it's actually one long sentence.
There's some semicolons, but basically, it's one big long flow of text from the top to
the bottom of the page.
Well, this is pretty unusual.
Jamaica Kincaid obviously is doing something here on purpose.
So, the question is, why?
Why would she arrange her language this way?
Well, I think maybe it's because she would like to overwhelm the reader in the same way
that the girl in the story is getting overwhelmed by all
these instructions and all these rules, all this advice coming from this mother-type character.
The girl is being burdened with more and more information that she's
supposed to process.
And she's supposed to change her behavior, and she's supposed to act in a certain way,
all so that she can be a proper young lady in the culture
that the mother would like her to know about.
So, the style of the story directly relates to the theme of the story.
It's pretty clever.
I am in the same position that the girl is in.
The girl is overwhelmed with all this information, and I, the reader, am overwhelmed by this
long list of instructions and rules strung together with
semicolons, with no break, no chance to catch your breath.
It's just all tumbling down upon you.
So, that's pretty smart, this listing.
It's- It's a great stylistic device.
Now, I think Kincaid is doing a couple of other things with style.
When she chooses to use italics instead of quotation marks in the dialog, that is an
interesting choice.
Uh, I think those italics are actually really effective, because what we have is this flow
of information, and if you stopped and put quotation
marks, it would interrupt that flow.
And we've seen how important that flow is.
We want the reader to be overwhelmed.
We want the girl to be overwhelmed.
So we don't want to interrupt it all with the girl making
a little comment using quotation marks.
Instead, we have that unobtrusive italics that just makes a little timid
statement.
This girl only gets to talk twice.
We hear from her in two lines of italicized text.
The italics just sneak right in.
They don't disrupt the flow.
But we do hear the timid voice of the girl, who I think
is pretty innocent, as she tries to fit a word in edgewise.
But this mother just can't be stopped, that that flow of
rules and instructions just keeps on coming.
Alright, so the list structure, the italics...
These are good stylistic devices.
There's a third thing I want to mention.
Kincaid uses really particular words in order to give us some clues about the setting of
this story.
She uses words like pepper pot, benna, uh, some other foods like
doukona, okra...
These words tell us that we're in a Caribbean island.
It may be Jamaica, as Jamaica Kincaid's name might suggest.
Or it may be Antigua, which is where Jamaica Kincaid was born.
But we're definitely in the south, and if we're very perceptive, we know that benna
is Calypso music, so really places us in the Caribbean.
So, Kincaid has very cleverly dropped hints along way to tell us where the setting of
the story is.
Where is this woman?
Where is this girl?
You know, what culture are we talking about?
Instead of giving us a paragraph of description, we get pepper pot and benna.
And that's pretty smart.
So, the listing technique, the use of italics, and the use of these words, Caribbean
words, are all stylistic choices that Kincaid has made.
And I think she did a good job.
Makes me want to go back and read the story again.
If you want to talk about some more aspects of this story, join me in the next video.