Annie John - Main

Table of Contents

1 Chapter names

1.0.1 Figures in the distance

  • naivety, childish innocence
  • lack of understanding - shown because the figures aren't clear
  • "in the distance" == far away from death
  • detachment from the rest of society

1.0.2 The Circling Hand

  • rupture in the child mother relationship
  • title vs what is really happening
    • shows her innocence, childish vision of the world
  • her mother has loved someone else than her

2 Chapter I

Two main themes:

  • Death
  • Innocence

Death is a major step her exit out of innocence

  • looks as her mother differently after someone died in her arms
    • motif of the hand
    • death of Annie's innocence
    • everything is linked to her mother
  • her mother is the intermediary between her and the world
  • she sees everything through her mother -> death of the child
  • doesn't understand death as itself; only what she observes
  • innocence showed through her shift in focus
    • she notices the smells, some random things
    • doesn't want to talk to people that have been "near" to death
      • paradoxical as she wants to see dead people

She seemed such a shameful thing, a girl whose mother had died and left her alone in the world

  • she acts as a mother with this girl
  • has an ambiguous relationship
    • says she's a dunce - but beautiful - and pulls her hair until she cries
      • testing the boundaries of power between the bright and the dunce
    • after the death of her mother- doesn't approach her anymore

Her mother plays tricks on her: Annie's perception of these tricks evolves and switches from protection

Last pages of the chapter:

On hearing that she was dead, I wished I had tapped the hump to see if it was hollow

  • She doesn't give the expected response - doesn't seem to have feelings towards dead people
  • She has a childish curiosity for dead people - she doesn't understand the concept of death
  • Death is one of the first motives for rebellion
    • "I was very late … but I was too excited to worry about it"
    • "I was going without my parent's permission
  • Tries to link death to things she knows: smells, objects (viewmaster), etc…

3 Chapter 2

Chapter mainly deals with the relationship between mother and child, and how it was before the conflict.

  • proximity between mother and child
  • continuity; she believes her world is perfect
  • idealsation of mother and her world
    • She is in Heaven

She learns about her mother's story, seperation from mother

  • foreshadowing for her seperation ?
  • tries to implicitly warn her that its normal to distance yourself from parents

Until she realises her parent's relationship

  • switches to Hell, shift in her world view

3.0.1 Analyzing quotes

My mother and I often took a bath together

  • proximity with her mother

My mother would alwyays add some hot water to take off the chill

  • complicity/secret between mother and child

My mother would bathe different parts of my body; then she would do the same to herself

  • the child is first, which shows the POV from Annie emphasizes her mother's dedication (my before herself)
  1. Obeah ritual

    It was a special bath in which the barks and _flowers of many different trees, together with al sorts of oils, were boiled in the same large cauldron

    • Shows the spiritual dimension of the bath; they have kept the traditional stuff
    • complicity of mother+daughter vs father (he doesn't like obeah)

    Bathing:

    • ritual
    • cleaning
    • protection
      • keeps any problems/conflicts away from them or prevent them from growing
    • physical proximity + care
      • mother → child
    • prevent bad spirits

    Ex of approach for analysis:

    • Point: Importance of bathing in the relationship
    • Quotes (short and concise):
      • "treatment", "special", "trusted", "together"
      • "my body", then "herself" (can be paraphrased)
    • Comment: they are linked through water; healing moment; hands; embryonic fluid

    When we went to the grocer's, she would point out to me the reason she bought each thing.

    • mother teaches about housekeeping
    • power relationship
    • molds her daughter into the person she wants her to become

    How important I felt to be with my mother

    • explicit POV
    • shows her admiration for the powerful motherly figure
      • aspires to become like her ?

    I was ever in her wake

    • the child is the shadow of the mother
    • follows her VERY closely

    But when my eyes rested on my mother, I found her beautiful

    • admiration for her mother
    • Very positive description of her mother

    Food brings them together, as they eat breakfast together; However the breadfruit incident chages this trend

    You just cannot go around the rest of your life looking like a little me

4 Chapter 3 & 4

Gwen vs Red Girl

Gwen Red Girl
"in the seat I most coveted" Wants to be like Gwen  
"I felt a pinch on my arm." "It was an affectionate pinch, I could tell."  
"It may have been in that moment that we fell in love"  
"When we saw how similar they [similarities] were"  
"Parting was all but unbearable"  
"If you saw one, you saw the other"  
"Each day began as I waited for Gwen"  
"Gwen and everything about her was perfect, as if she was in a picture"  
"As if we were joined at the shoulder, hup, and ankle, not to mention heart"  
"I never told her about my changed feeling for my mother"  
"Our chums [friends] often seemed overbearing"  
"The gesture was an exact copy, of course, of what we had seen our mothers do"  

> The great thing I had had once and then lost without an explanation

  • talks about her mother

Created: 2019-06-05 Wed 17:24