You have probably practiced close reading fiction and poetry in your English classes by looking at how the details in poems, short stories, and novels help convey emotion, develop an idea, or make a statement. The choices writers make serve their purpose, and your close observation of those choices helps you understand and analyze that purpose. Writers of fiction and nonfiction—and even poetry—make many of the same stylistic choices: those about diction and syntax, certainly. Fiction writers and poets may be more precise, or more imaginative, using figurative language, imagery, tone, and mood to serve their purpose.
Let’s take a look at the very short story “Girl,” by Jamaica Kincaid.
Girl
Jamaica Kincaid
Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don’t walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn’t have gum on it, because that way it won’t hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don’t sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn’t speak to wharf-rat boys, not even to give directions; don’t eat fruits on the street—flies will follow you; but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a button; this is how to make a buttonhole for the button you have just sewed on; this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so that it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so that they don’t have a crease; this is how you grow okra—far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants; when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well, and this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don’t squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know; don’t pick people’s flowers—you might catch something; don’t throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don’t like, and that way something bad won’t fall on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man, and if this doesn’t work there are other ways, and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn’t fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it’s fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?
(1983)
You probably noticed many of the choices Jamaica Kincaid made in crafting this story and can make some connections between those choices and the purpose of the text. The diction communicates the mother’s mixed messages. Many of her rules are crystal clear; the diction is precise and the images of food and clothing are vivid and concrete: ironed khakis, pumpkin fritters fried in very hot sweet oil, bread pudding, the right kind of buttonhole. Some, however, are less clear: how to behave in the presence of men you don’t know, how to love a man, how to squeeze the bread to make sure it is fresh. That juxtaposition of the very concrete examples of food, clothing, and etiquette to the less clear examples of morality and behavior are part of the meaning of the story. Can knowing the right ways to behave ensure that you have the respect of the community? That seems to be the mother’s hope.
The syntax sends a message as well. The story is one long periodic sentence, its clauses connected almost entirely with semicolons. The only breaks come with the occasional italicized phrase or question from the daughter. The speaker—the mother—barely takes a breath. Does a mother really speak this way or is the story really from the daughter’s point of view—the way she hears her mother’s hectoring? That ambiguity is part of the meaning of the story: the way the daughter hears her mother, her tough love, her contradictory instructions, her suspicions, tells us a great deal about what it means to be both a mother and a daughter in a small community with traditional values. The vivid diction and breathless syntax create a mood and tone in “Girl” that highlight the love-laced anxiety that is at the heart of mother-daughter relationships the world over.