There is a phrase in the story that really caught my attention. After talking about a series of situations that make this girl, the visitor, feel too much an outsider she says; "I wondered if ever in my whole life a day would go by when these people I had left behind, my own family, would not appear before me one way or another" Also, it was a surprise for her that she longed to be back in the place she had come from, and see the people she wanted to leave because even their “most natural gestures made her feel upset.”
I think the whole story is about how all those small things that make you feel that you belong somewhere can make you feel a stranger if the time and the place are not right. The familiar way in which the couple and their daughters play and laugh at the table, all the trips and activities they remember, the way gentle they treat each other, everything seems to draw the picture of the perfect family and the perfect life. That life she is now sharing is the opposite of what she wanted to escape from. So, why does she feel all that discomfort?
After reading the story and relating everything with my own experience, I would say that the writer wanted to show how even the most ideal situation is like a pair of tight new shoes that one has to wear for a while until they take the form of your feet and the discomfort disappears. You might want to leave, go see the world, become independent… but you have to find your new niche or build your own new nest, for the perfect life that belongs to others is not necessarily the perfect life for you.
Here is the question I have for my classmates.
There is something the author says in the interview. She was talking about her first writings and how she got the opportunity to publish them and she says: “It didn’t seem to be my writing. But he published it just as I gave it to him and that’s when I realized that the way I said things or the way I thought about things was the way I would write… -my authority and my sense of self possession were a profound part of my expression and worthy of consideration.”
So, what are the parts of your expression you consider the most important when you write?
I can truly say that I appreciate the author’s writing. She writes in a way that takes me though what was experiencing. I like the point where she finds the weather could deceive her, which lead to the turning point in the story. “The sun was shining but the air was cold (pg. 271)”. She was not used to weather like that. This point would have triggered her dislike for her new home. The author showed a cascade of thoughts that made her home sick after that particular incident. It’s funny how one little thing brings out deep seeded emotions.
ReplyDeleteKincaid captured the readers through her descriptive writing and did feel like her story was dragging on. The visitor never feels at home outside her element and it is the memories that makes her want to escape New York. She lived with her “family” not to long before they started calling her “the visitor” as if she didn’t feel like one before. Yes she was in a new environment, but she tried adapt. She tried to make friends with the maid, she didn’t truly give Kincaid a chance.
Somehow no matter how bad it was in your previous home if you have good memories in it, you’ll always want to go back. Why is it that people mainly gravitate to what they know in fear of the new? Why call her a visitor if she was making efforts to somewhat become part of the “family”?