Life and Death Reamagined

Life and Death Reamagined

Life and Death Reimagined

Corey Hammonds

ENG 125 Kristen McClure

February 11, 2013

The literary work which captured my interest was “Used to Live Here Once” by Jean Rhys. In the short autobiography of Jean Rhys it states that she was used to being called a “white nigger” while growing up in the West Indies and that she was aware of mistreated and helpless females. It spoke how she often portrayed their needs and dilemmas in her writings. “The theme in a story is associated with an idea that lies behind the story. Every story narrows a broad underlying idea, shapes it in a unique way, and makes the underlying idea concrete.” (Clugston, 2010). The story Use to Live Here Once has an underlying theme about a women’s journey through life and looking at life from the point of view of someone whom has passed away. As the author states this story is an example of how a journey motif that is used to capture the intentions and struggles associated with various happenings in a person’s lifetime and also to intimate what holistic view of those incidents might be like. (Clugston, 2010). The main character in the story is revisiting a place that she vaguely remembers, however the place is also different in so many ways. The theme of the story is not immediately noticeable, as I had to read the story multiple times in order to understand what the exact underline meaning of the story was about. When I first read the story I thought it was making a reference to racism. I only came to realize the story was about death when I did some research on what is was about and then went back and re-read the story again to make the correlations make sense. There are many literary elements which contribute to the theme of this story. A literary element is described as things that make up part of a story. Types of literary elements include plot, point of view, tone, setting, character symbolism, etc. The use of literary elements ensures the...