English Literature

Guy de Maupassants The Necklace and the famous childrens story Cinderella both revolve around a poor lady and her life-changing experience. The Necklace is the story of Madame Loisel, a poor lady who dreamt of a better life. She was married to a clerk, and lived a simple, meager lifestyle. On the other hand, Cinderella is about a girl, Cinderella, who lived a poor life because she was treated like a slave by her stepmother and stepsisters. Both of these characters are endowed with a unique beauty, but because theyre poor, their beauty is left unappreciated. Both of these stories are characterized by an event, a party, which would greatly change each of their lives.
    The main difference between Madame Loisel and Cinderella is their outlook in life. Madame Loisel is very ambitious, constantly dreaming of a better life than what she has now. The only problem is that she never had the opportunity to change her life. She was married to a clerk and lived in a small, ugly house. Every moment of her life, she dreamt of something better. On the other hand, Cinderella was a very enduring character. Instead of standing up to her new family, she just obeyed their wishes so as not to cause any problems. She suffered all their taunting and even lived a life of a slave so that she wont be a trouble to her father.
    Another thing that sets the two stories and two characters apart is the life-changing event that they experienced. Both of them are invited in a ball to party with the wealthy and the famous. Madame Loisel, being the ambitious woman that she is, wanted to dress up to look beautiful. She even borrowed a diamond necklace from a friend so that she would look stunning and blend in with the rich people. However, at the end of the party, she realized that she lost the necklace. Her husband has to borrow a lot of money to replace the necklace, and they had to spend the next ten years of their life working so hard in order to pay their debts. On the other hand, Cinderella attended the royal ball with the help of her fairy godmother. She attracted the interest of a prince who never left her side all throughout the party. When she almost failed to return by midnight, she accidentally left a shoe, which the prince used to locate her. They are eventually reunited and lived happy a life from then on.
    There were a lot of similarities between the Madame Loisel from The Necklace and Cinderella of Cinderella. They were both poor, but both were also beautiful. What set them apart is their outlook in life. Madame Loisel was ambitious, while Cinderella was enduring. This eventually became a factor when they both experienced a life-changing event in a party. Madame Loisel ended up living a life of greater poverty while Cinderella eventually met her prince and lived happily ever after.

There are many stories considered to be classics and have been the subject of much scrutiny and analysis through the ages.  Among the most commonly used stories in the subject of Gothicism and horror are those written by Edgar Alan Poe, simply because they are fine examples of this genre.  However, the stories of Poe are such that they can be quite archaic at times, making relevant association quite difficult for the reader, unlike the story, Charles by Shirley Jackson and Lamb to Slaughter by Roald Dahl which are stories that are quite contemporary in nature and very simple in execution that readers tend to find it easier to associate and identify with the stories but it is not the execution or approach in both of these stories that make them quite unique, rather it is in the treatment and the characterization of the protagonists.  In both of these stories, the protagonists are characterized in a very vivid way revealing an underlying or different dimension in their natures, very accurately portraying the protagonists as people with seriously disturbed psychological states, whether permanent or temporary.
    The first story, Charles by Shirley Jackson is about a young kindergarten boy named, Laurie who tells stories to his parents about an apparently problematic classmate in school, named Charles.  Laurie describes Charles to his parents to be somebody who is periodically troublesome in school, and at times helpful, but also schemy despite the positive faade or personality that he shows.  Eventually, the parents of Laurie become curious about this child and are bent on meeting the parents of the child.  Soon enough the opportunity arises as the school holds a PTA meeting.  In the PTA meeting, Lauries mother is anxious to meet the mother of the Charles that her son has been talking about almost everyday.  However, in the end of the story, the mother of Laurie talks to the teacher, and finds out that there is no such kid in the class named Charles.  The story ends with implications that in fact, the Charles that Laurie was talking about was himself and not any other boy.  This thematic of a pathologic mental state takes on a new life in Roald Dahls story, Lamb to Slaughter because in this story, instead of portraying a mentally disturbed protagonist, he presents a character who seems to be very normal, and because of a particular incident, suddenly shifts to becoming someone who is mentally deranged critical enough to commit the murder of her own husband.  In the story, the pregnant Missis of a Police detective is sitting in a room with her husband who suddenly reveals that he has an extra-marital affair and was going to leave her.  With this revelation, the wife is shocked and bludgeons her husband behind the head with a leg of lamb.  Then, the wife goes through a series of events that validate her deranged personality.  She carefully plans out activities succeeding the murder that get her off the hook.  She puts the leg of lamb that she used in the oven the she goes out to buy things from a nearby grocer telling the grocer that her purchases were for her husband who did not want to go out for dinner, but was in fact, already dead in their living room floor.  Next she goes back to the house and pretends that this was the first time she finds her husband, after which she call the police and reports the incident.  When the police are busy looking for the murder weapon, she invites then to dine on the leg of lamb that was roasting in the oven.  They eat and in the end, the Missis simply giggles.
    In both of these stories, the approach is character-based.  Fiction can have two basic approaches, one is the approach where the story is plot-driven and the other is where the story is character-driven.  In both of the stories read there is a character-driven approach because instead of giving more attention to how the plot dictates how the story will unfold, both stories give more attention to how the protagonists would cause the revelation of the story.  In the first story, the first person-point of view is taken, perhaps, to delay the unfolding of the character of the protagonist, who, instead of the narrator, happens to be the child, Laurie.  In the second story, a third person point of view is taken, maybe to reveal more about the internal workings of the mind of the protagonist in the story.  In both of these stories, though, the main thematic is the psychological state of the protagonists.  The first story has something to do with what is known in psychology as projection where the troubled person projects himself unto other people whether real or imagined, to attract the attention of people close to himher like the parents, in the case of the story.  In the second story, we have a protagonist who snaps psychologically after being confronted with an issue that was too difficult to bear and to accept both emotionally and psychologically.  The second story is borders on crimes of passion and psychosis in terms of thematics, but in the end, it turns out to be more of the latter than the former. 
    Discussing the first story in more detail, early on, the author already foreshadows the kind of protagonist that is in the story with the following conversation that Laurie has with his father

He sure did, Laurie said. Look up, he said to his father.
    What his father said, looking up.
    Look down, Laurie said. Look at my thumb. Gee, youre dumb. He began
to laugh insanely. (Jackson)

    This early, the author already offers a glimpse of what Laurie actually is  the aimless and pointless act of asking his father to do purposeless things like looking up or looking at the thumb suggests that Laurie has something going in the upstairs department this, as well, is validated by the kind of laugh that the protagonist elicits, insane according to the author.  Now, this early revelation of what the character really is maybe considered a foreshadowing of events which is a tool in fiction used to allow the audience to anticipate what might come next, however, it does not work quite well in the story because instead, it reveals too much probably because the story is character-driven and not plot-driven.  The author also gives another clue as to the character of the protagonist in how the boy develops, my sweetvoiced nursery-school tot replaced by a long-trousered, swaggering character who forgot to stop at the corner and wave good-bye to me (Jackson) here, we have Jackson revealing the emergence of a new and different person from the boy who used to be sweetvoiced.  The use of the words replaced and character in this particular line reveals that the narrator no longer knows her son the way she used to.  Moving on in the story, we have more revelations of the character of the boy being one who seems to be indifferent and ill-mannered, which points out to something being seriously wrong with his social and family life.  In the lines, What did he do I asked again, but Laurie slid off his chair, took a cookie, and left, while his father was still saying, See here, young man. (Jackson) the author portrays the character as one who seems to be detached from the things around him, taking no notice of his own father, which by the way, is also a way of showing discourtesy.  Then, all throughout the story, the author describes the character of Laurie in the way the boy describes Charles, for instance, we have Laurie saying, Charles
wanted to color with green crayons so he hit the teacher and she spanked him and said
nobody play with Charles but everybody did. (Jackson) referring to the aggressive nature of LaurieCharles or He told a little girl to say a word and she said it and the teacher washed her mouth out with soap and Charles laughed. (Jackson) illustrating how schemy the boy has become.  However, it is not what the boy does that proves disturbing in this story but the fact that the boy uses an imagined person to reveal his own personality to his parents.  Now, proof of this projection as it is called in psychology is the fact that Laurie refers to Charles as being a separate and different person, as in the lines describing Charles, Hes bigger than me, Laurie said. And he doesnt have any rubbers and he doesnt wear a jacket. (Jackson) Here the author accurately suggests that instead of just using a different name or projecting his misgivings to another existing person, the protagonist creates another person in his mind and uses this Charles character to reveal himself to his parents.  Now, why is this, because young boys normally are able to speak to their parents with much frankness and candor  In this case, the reader begins to question the relationship of Laurie with his parents, because if he is not able to communicate directly with them and uses a dummy to tell them things about him, then something must be wrong with his relationship with them. 
    In the second story, another approach is taken to reveal the deranged personality of the protagonist.  First, the author creates a picture of perfection with Mrs. Maloney.  The statements, She took his coat and hung it in the closer.  Then she walked over and made the drinks, (Dahl) she, on her side, was content to sit quietly, enjoying his company after the long hours alone in the house., (Dahl) and If youre too tired to eat out, she went on, its still not too late.  Theres plenty of meat and stuff in the freezer,, (Dahl) all paint a picture of a perfect, caring, and loving wife but then, even early on, the author also reveals the obsession that the wife has for her husband which sets the tone for what was about to happen later on.  In the story, the narrator describes Mary Maloney as loving to luxuriate in the presence of this man, (Dahl) suggesting a sinister, and deeper side to her love affair with the man also, there are references to her uncanny attention paid to her husband with the lines, When the clock said ten minutes to five, she began to listenshe heard the tires on the gravel outside, and the car door slamming, the footsteps passing the window, the key turning in the lock., (Dahl) and She wasnt really watching him, but she knew because she heard the ice cubes  against the bottom of the empty glass ...  (Dahl)  This strange personality of Mrs. Maloney makes leads the audience to conclude that there must be something really wrong about her, especially in the way she peruses her husband.  Later in the story, more is revealed about her when her husband tells her that he was going to leave her, the protagonist then watches, him (her husband) with a kind of dazed horror as he went further and further away from her with each word. (Dahl) and she When she walked across the room she couldnt feel her feet touching the floor.  She couldnt feel anything at all- except a slight nausea and a desire to vomit. (Dahl)  These two lines reveal the gagged reaction she had to what her husband reveals and foreshadows a further even where her emotions explode.  This explosion comes when she bludgeons her husband with a leg of lamb.  Later on, she does unusual things like practicing her script, talking in front of the mirror (Dahl), and then acting as if nothing happened.  She reveals what she is doing to be acting with the lines, All the old love and longing for him welled up inside her(she) began to cry her heart out.  It was easy.  No acting was necessary. . (Dahl)  Here, the author reveals that the protagonist is acting by suggesting the opposite.  Then the disturbing nature of the protagonist is revealed when after she kills her husband, she walks back into the house, and  when she entered the kitchen by the back door, she was humming a little tune to herself and smiling. (Dahl)  This line suggests that a nerve has snapped further in the mind of the protagonist because of her indifference in killing her own husband.  This is further validated in the end of the story, when after the police had eaten the leg of lamb that she used to kill her husband, Mary Maloney began to giggle.  The insanity of the character is further confirmed with this final line, because she actually killed her husband and felt no guilt at all after doing the terrible act.  This story is quite like the story The tell Tale Heart of Edgar Allan Poe, but in a more contemporary and modern setting.
    So, based on the textual evidence, it is obvious that both of the stories tackled dwell on the characterization of the protagonists and this characterization reveals that both of the characters are mentally unhealthy.  In the first story, the protagonist, because of his problems with his parents, projects himself unto an imagined character, and in the second story, because of obsession, the protagonists becomes insane and murders her husband.  In both of the stories, the psychological make up of the characters is undeniable and the fact that both stories have been crafted really well makes these stories worth the read.   

Has the essential idea of rebellion changed over time No, I dont think so. Perhaps the nuances, the connotations, and the relations have shifted and adjusted a bit but, in essence, I still believe that the idea of rebellion has kept its core meaning I still believe that no matter what time or circumstance the idea of a rebellion still holds to its meaning.
    In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a rebellion is defined as being an opposition to a dominant entity  whether person or thought or government it is also an instance of defiance or resistance against some ruling force. This is the meaning which I see as true no matter where one decides the use the word and the idea of rebellion and the texts below will show that even across literature this is still something that holds. Now, it might be that for some, the idea of a rebellion would involve physical revolt and even violent uprising however, this is not always a necessary component to the idea of rebellion. Basing on the dictionary definition, a rebellion need not always manifest itself in physical displays because a rebellion of thought or of belief or of spirit, even, is possible. Apart from that, the idea of a rebellion will also always possess the duality rising from the fact that the judgment of the goodness or the justness of any rebellion will be based upon two opposing sides because the very idea of the event of a rebellion alone already pits two factions or entities against one another.  More often that not, though, one would see that the very justness or goodness that is being put into question is supported by the fact that these rebels are going against an oppressive status quo.
    For example, in the texts Canada to England and History Lesson, one would see two of the the rebel voices in these poems trying to get their messages up out of the status quo of the accepted history lessons the poems rebel against the dominant history and resist the common flow of English assimilation. The two poems show violence, yes, but they do not in themselves cause physical violence. Symbolic violence is done through rejection of a status quo, yes, but it is still not the commonplace violence that people are used to.  To be more specific, in History Lesson the poem goes

Pioneers and traders bring gifts
Smallpox, Seagrams and Rice Krispies
Civilization has reached the promised land.

Between the snap crackle pop of smoke stacks
and multi-coloured rivers
swelling with flower powered zee
are farmers sowing skulls and bones
and miners pulling from gaping holes
green paper faces
of smiling English lady
The colossi in which they trust
while burying
breathing forests and fields
beneath concrete and steel
stand shaking fists
waiting to mutilate
whole civilizations
ten generations at a blow. (Armstrong)

This excerpt shown above is a rebellious voice, all right because it raises a dissenting voice that clashes with the usual depiction of colonizers as educators and bringers of civilization. Although the poem does go and say that civilization has reached the promise lang (Armstrong) it also goes on to point out more horrors of what the colonizers brought. There is smallpox, buried breathing forests and fields, etc (Armstrong). It shifts the attention of readers onto the horrors of what the colonizers brought with them rather than the glamorized gifts that the English explorers brought. Now, even in the 19th century poem Canada to England the same thread of rebellion can be seen, although it may be directed in the opposite direction.

How sounds my voice, my warrior kinsman, now
Sounds it not like to thine in lusty youth--
A world-possessing shout of busy men,
Veined with the clang of trumpets and the noise
Of those who make them ready for the strife,
And in the making ready bruise its head
Sounds it not like to thine--the whispering vine,
The robe of summer rustling thro the fields,
The lowing of the cattle in the meads,
The sound of Commerce, and the music-set,
Flame-brightened step of Art in stately halls,--
All the infinity of notes which chord
The diapason of a Nations voice

My infants tongues lisp word for word with thine
We worship, wed, and die, and God is named
That way ye name Him,--strong bond between
Two mighty lands when as one mingled cry,
As of one voice, Jehovah turns to hear.
The bonds between us are no subtle links
Of subtle minds binding in close embrace,
Half-struggling for release, two alien lands,
But Gods own seal of kindred, which to burst
Were but to dash his benediction from
Our brows.  Who loveth not his kin,
Whose face and voice are his, how shall he love
God whom he hath not seen (Crawford)

Canada to England openly welcomes the English into Canada and so goes against the grain of anti-British sentiment of that time. The poem directly acknowledges two mighty lands () as one and praises the virtues that come with the mingling of Canada and England. The poem, in itself, though not a physical weapon, is  the kind of weapon that goes against the dominant beliefs and challenges the pervading thoughts of the time thus causing and inciting resistance to domination in the like-minded. Comparing these two poems, one can see that though they tackle very different beliefs and come very different historical periods, their purpose and their still do intersect and show us that rebellion, in whatever form, does not vary too much.
    Now, another good example that would the universality of the idea of rebellion is through George Orwells classic dystopian novel, 1984. The novel can be seen as also speaking of colonizers and domination, but, in this book, the colonization and the domination has gone so much farther than just the colonization of land it has gone on into the colonization and the domination of a mans mind and identity and it is here that readers are able to really that rebellion may not necessarily exist only in the physical sense. The main characters, ultimately, might have not been able to win their rebellion but, still, they were able to make their own space against Big Brother in their secret meetings and even in the corners of their minds. As Winston, the main character of the novel said They cant get inside you. If you can feel that ... staying human is worth while, even when it cant have any result whatever, youve beaten them. (Orwell). This excerpt shows how rebellion does not really need grand displays of physical revolts or insurrections it just needs the rebel to be able to stand against and resist the status quo and the domination of an external force. The novel shows us again how the idea of a rebellion still stays true to its essential definition of resisting a domination and it also strengthen the idea that a rebellion will always exist when there is the oppressive force that forces people to bend under a will other than their own.
    Through these three texts, I believe that the idea of rebellion continues to be the same no matter what era the idea is invoked.

1)The inferno (hell), we are told at the very opening of Canto III, is a place constructed by Divine Justice, Omnipotence, and Love. What problems, if any, do this raise Can you defend Dantes poem from the charge that it makes God appear appallingly cruel
The Vestibule of Hell, where the gate to hell is located, bears the following inscription Sacred justice moved my architect I was raised here by divine omnipotence, Primordial love and ultimate Intellect. (Alighieri, 2009, Canto VII, 4-6) This statement can be questioned as the eternal tortures to which God doomed the sinners in Inferno might make the ultimate intelligence resemble cruel genius. However, such claims are not actually correct.
 As a wise, knowledgeable and loving being, God established rules according to which humans could peacefully coexist and evolve, but seduced by the ancient evil, human deviants failed to follow these principles (Chiarenza, 1989,  p.280). Due to the fact that God, the supreme being, loved His children, He was not able to stand apart from all the sins committed and decided to safeguard the blessed and the pure in the afterlife from those who destroyed the sparkle of divinity in themselves and to deter living humans from further transgressions. As a result, Inferno was constructed in this place the souls of sinners were kept in isolation and subjected to certain punitive measures.
It would be unfair to state that the tortures the inmates of hell suffer are cruel. Cruelty refers to either indifference to suffering or pleasure from causing it to others. In the case of Dantes Inferno, the souls are paid back strictly according to the sins and crimes they committed in their earthly life, so justice is a more exact word to describe the organization of hell. One of the good examples is the fate of hoarders and wasters from the fourth circle who push huge stones into each other They clashed together, and then at that point Each one turned backward, rolling retrograde, Crying, Why keepest and Why squanderest thou (Alighieri, 2009, Canto VII, 28-30). In the human world, they maniacally accumulated or wasted money and hated one another, seeing the others faults and failing to notice their own. In the Inferno, they are explained that what they were doing was pointless when the stones they push towards each other crash, the hoarders and the wasters start all over again. Their sentence therefore can be regarded as symbolic (Gilbert, 1965, p.72).
Another illustration of Gods justice is river of blood in the seventh circle where the violent against neighbors are kept. The residents of this place were tyrants in their lifetime and shed blood of fellows and neighbors, so their afterlife is a logical continuation of their earthly existence. Now they are boiled in the river of blood Just as you see the boiling stream grow shallow along this side  Stalked with highways, bloody and abhorred..( Alighieri, 2009, Canto XII, 127-139) The degree of their guilt and the scope of their cruelty determine the depth of their submergence in blood. The two infamous characters whose souls are condemned to staying in the river are Sectus and Pyrrhus, the ex-warlords who sacrificed thousands of human lives for the satisfaction of their political ambitions Holy Justice spends its wrath of Sectus and Pyrrhus, (Alighieri, 2009, Canto XII, 133-134)
Therefore, the structure and functions of each part of the Inferno demonstrate that God is not cruel or indifferent to the torments others endure, it is rather implied that each sin requires fair punishment. The Inferno is an example of perfect case-sensitive justice and intelligent design.
2)Dante presents a ranking of failures of moral virtue. Why, according to this ranking, are the sins of malice and fraud more severely punished than those of sensual appetite
In Dantes poem it is indicated that those overcome by lust and gluttony reside in the second and third circles respective and deserve relatively light punishment, whereas the sinners whose misconduct was associated with violence and fraud are kept in the sixth and the seventh circles and committed to severe tortures (e.g. flogged or boiled). The logic of distribution of justice is explained when the narrator asks Virgil, his guide, why the inmates of the first five circles are punished outside Dis, the deepest hell. Virgil refers to Aristotles Ethics and states that lust and gluttony belong to the category of sins of Incontinence, whereas violence and fraud originate from Malice Hast thou no recollection of those words With which thine Ethics thoroughly discusses The dispositions three, that Heaven abides not, -- Incontinence, and Malice, and insane Bestiality And how Incontinence Less God offendeth, and less blame attracts (Alighieri, 2009, Canto XI, 79-84).
Incontinence refers to the lack of self-control or ones inability to manage their own drives. The source of lust, gluttony and sensual appetite in general is the desire of human flesh, and their development is normally not associated with evil intentions towards others, but rather with the lack of willpower and, more importantly, poor spiritual life.  In addition, the wrongness of these actions often consists in the lack of attention to their intellectual, moral and spiritual development with concentration on physical pleasures. However, gluttons cause no serious harm to themselves and others, but only thwart the development of their divine self.
On the contrary, violence and fraud as the sins of Malice are based fully upon evil intentions and cruel motives. The result of arson is destruction of others property and impoverishment, suicide is an attempt to destroy ones own life and is thus associated with the abuse of Gods gift, those, who curse  God, also  challenge the Creators authority and divine justice. Illustrative and interesting is also the explanation of the inherent Malice of usury such people do violence to human industry by betraying natural laws and making money on the labor of others instead of working by themselves And since the usurer takes another way, Nature herself and in her follower Disdains he, for elsewhere he puts his hope (Alighieri, 2009, Canto XI, 106-108).  Fraud is even more heinous sin, as it implies deliberate act of bestowing peoples trust for oneself and each other. Accordingly, fraud makes impossible peoples faith in the others original goodness and due to the existence of a divine sparkle in each soul, fraud partly affects peoples belief in God. In general, the sins of violence are more likely to endanger peace amongst people, as compared to lust or gluttony. Besides, the sins of violence have greater ripple effect upon society, destroying God-blessed bonds of fraternity between people and making them more selfish, suspicious and less cooperative and supportive in their attitude towards each other. 
As one can conclude, fraud and violence refer to deliberate harm to others and make adverse influence upon society, so they are punished more severely than excessive sensual appetite.

In the novel Autobiography of my mother by Jamaica Kincaid, Xuela is seen to embrace her sexuality as her weapon of seduction to achieve power, self-control and sexual pleasure. In the novel, sex is used as tool for gaining pleasure and psychological satisfaction more than even life of a fetus that she carried as a surrogate mother to a white family. Consequently, the extent of colonialism and racism power over a slave are satirical illustrated in Xuelas power over her body.                                                   Her female sexual protagonist is first seen when she seduces Monsieur LaBatte a married man, though with permission from his barren wife who longs to have a child and hopes that the relationship would produce a child. Xuela confessed of the calm and pacifying pleasure she felt while having sex with the married man, through all parts of my body that ached I relived the deep pleasure I had just experienced (Kincaid 72). Moreover, after losing her virginity she is able to demonstrate an extraordinary state of calmness and self-control after Monsieur LaBatte aggressive tribulation when she concluded that, I had only lost consciousness and I picked up where I had left off in my ache of pleasure (Kincaid 72). Evidently, from the statement Xuela who was a mere teenager of fifteen years outstandingly explored her body and sexuality to achieve pleasure for her own sake. The power of the young girl can be felt in the expression of her sexual feeling and her tactics to overpower a white man who was then supposed to be a lord over a black girl thus illustrating that she was indeed in touch with herself, her sexuality and had the power over her feelings and overcomes the sexual urge after being satisfied by literally picking up her conscious self. This incident clearly illustrates how she uses sex as source of pleasure and gratification while at the same time displaying the desperate White mans need for a child.                                                 Incidentally, Xuela aborted the couples child for three main reasons. Firstly, she was supposed to derive sexual pleasure from her sexual encounters and not a child. Furthermore a child and motherhood meant that her power over sex could be imprisoned in motherly-care thus she could end up losing that egocentric sexual controlling power she perceived to have in seducing men. Secondly, she insists that she had power over her body and was therefore beyond the white dominance and colonialism that was quite rampant. Her power is further displayed and enhanced in her when she realizes that the white couple is in deep agony and dire need of a child. Consequently she capitalizes on the desperate family for us to see her power over sexuality, I had carried my own life in my own hands (Kincaid 83). The self proclaimed love for her body is in her personality as a source of comfort. Thirdly, Xuela who had a feminist approach to life dictates that her refusal to bear motherhood was realistic and time bound within her sphere of power and life since she never wanted her child to suffer in the hands of a step mother as she recalled how a step mother nearly poisoned her so she attributes abortion as a right to be excised over her body, women can, and should, have exclusive right over their own body, whether it is deriving pleasure from sex or refusing the biological faculty of womanhood. Lastly, Xuela never wanted to have a child out of a racial and oppressive fatherhood.                Nevertheless, Xuelas notion about life misguides her into seeking more sexual gratification experiences out of loneliness and power to see if she was to be love. This is so because she subscribed to the idea that all people who loved and she could love had died, I felt I did not want to belong to anyone, that since the one person I would have consented to own me had never lived to do so, I did not want anyone to belong to me (Kincaid 112). That is the reason why she aborted, and went into a loveless marriage and quickly dislodged herself since in that closed life she could not feel her power over her sexuality. Reflectively Xuela seems to define the power over sexuality as the ability to experience and have sex orgasms with different men in order to feel that she is in control. Though a conclusion can be made about her psychological materialistic self her father is described by her as being too vain and unrealistic attendant to the empire business since he was a policeman whom she vehemently hated, My fathers skin was the color of corruption copper, gold, ore (Kincaid 181). Perceptively, Xuela and pursuits are therefore closely relating to the socio-psychological environment of her life. She had to transcend colonialism and racism the way she conceived it and thus she achieves that by hurting many lives who wanted to sexual take advantage of her during her life.                                                                                                                         Moreover, the social stigma associated with Xuelas failure to conform to motherhood, limited temptress and sexual subjugation while gripping to authenticate her sexual power can be said to be a chief characteristic of her paternal background that she discredits while generally accepting the recognition of her true self identity as an African with a different touch of understanding
    This account of my life has been an account of my mothers life as much as it has been an     account of mine, and even so, again it is an account of the life of the children I did not     have, as it is their account of me. In me is the voice I never heard, the face I never saw,     the being I came from. In me are the voices that should have come out of me, the faces I     never allowed to form, the eyes I never allowed to see me. This account is an account of     the person who was never allowed to be and an account of the person I did not allow     myself to become. (Kaidman 228)
The end of the novel elucidated the transcending egocentric belief that Xuela hold about her life in regard to understanding her true character and circumstances that forced her to live like that though she reflectively disapproves of the promiscuous actions and is in dire need of love that she contrary beliefs died at her birth with her mother. Thus she generally accepts to be worthless as, Since I do not matter, I do not long to matter, but I matter anyway. Therefore her sexual pursuits seem to be the most advanced channel of power to assert her personality. The social society discredited her all the time to the extent of being branded evil and other unnamable names, my memory, ability to retain the tiniest detail...regarded as unusual that my teacher said I was evil...pointing to the fact that my mother was of the Carib people (Kaidman 16). With the death of her mother and the uncaring father, the  inception of her life was horrid and I came to feel that for my whole life I had been standing on a precipice, that my loss had made me vulnerable, hard, and helpless (Kaidman 4) as a result Xuelas perspective about morality and marriage is distorted by the society.                                Conclusively, Xuela has been depicted by Kaidman as a professional power hunter who gains all her aspirations at heart while disposing the empirical colonialism and paternal racism. Consequently in the aftermath of racism and colonialism Xuela does not fail but in tranquility takes her stand on her values as not to bring forth another soul to undergo the same tribulations as her own life-thus affirming her total control of her sexuality as a source of power and satisfaction in her lonely and discriminated life.