Some notes on Essay 3, Part 2

If your score for your imitation Jamaica Kincaid story is less than 20/25, it is almost certainly because of these two reasons:

• Your story was too literal
• Your tone was too direct

Here are some ways to avoid these problems your second time through:

• Reread “Girl” and “The Letter from Home” before you start revising your one-sentence story; get Kincaid’s tone and rhythm in your head.
• Ask of every word “Is this word necessary”? Must it be a black void, as one of you wrote? Or is it sufficient that it is a void?
• Bleed the specifics out of your story: no one in “Girl” or “Letter” has a name; settings are never mentioned, though they are alluded to.*
• Move the most important moments of the story to symbols: let images like a rower at sea or an indignant baker carry the weight of the plot.
• Write an iceberg. Never explain when you can imply.
• Don’t let the plot be the only thing in your story. In Kincaid’s stories, the plot simply serves as a way for Kincaid to make a more important argument—a critique of the methods by which Antiguan patriarchy spreads itself, say. Your story should be a vehicle for making an argument.
• Read your story out loud over and over again. Listen to its pacing. Start your story with quick clipped phrases, and only slowly build to more sophisticated ideas.
• Don’t overuse dialog: although back-and-forth appears in “Girl,” it does so only sparingly.

* I know that the essay prompt urges you to have a concrete setting for your story; however, there’s no rule that you must name that setting: Kincaid only ever implies hers, all the better to bolster the allegorical quality of her writing.

Some notes on Essay 3, Part 1

The structure for Essay 3 that I recommended in discussion this morning went like this (each number corresponds to a paragraph):

1. Thesis: Jamaica Kincaid’s main point in “Girl” or “The Letter from Home” is X—and think like Larry when you’re trying to find X: look for the 7/8ths of the iceberg that we can’t see above the surface of the story.
2. Symbol(s). Question: what nouns in Kincaid’s stories are freighted with extra meaning? Answer: almost every one. Don’t get bogged down thinking through the significance of every object: look for patterns of images the way Larry looked for patterns in the appearances of the moon in Jane Eyre. Pick the one or two symbols that advance your thesis: how do they help you prove that Kincaid meant X?
3. Theme: what big idea underlies the story? Think about the themes we’ve seen in Jane Eyre: independence, self-awareness, the power to read the world. These themes tie to symbols—the moon, true light, etc.—so you should be able to get to these themes by working through the symbols in the story you’ve chosen.
4. Structure: how does the main theme of the story shape itself? Where does it begin, when does it reach its climax, and how does it resolve or not resolve?
5. Meaning: why did Kincaid write this story? How do symbol, theme, and structure reveal the point that lies under the story itself?

Some important questions to ask yourself when you’re trying to crack the story:

• What’s up with the title of the story? Why is it “Girl” and not “Mother,” or “Slut”?
• Who is the speaker of the story, and how does Kincaid let you know who the speaker is?
• Who—in “The Letter from Home”—is the audience of the story? And how do we know? Why is the speaker writing to that audience?
• What is the speaker’s psychology? What do we learn about the speaker from how she or he tells the story?
• Why is the story written in one sentence? Why not use two sentences, or a thousand?
• How do tone and language change over the course of the story? What sort of development does this change suggest?

Jamaica Kincaid reads “Girl”

As you return to “Girl” for your second draft of Essay 3—unless, of course, you are writing on “The Letter from Home”—listen to this recording of Jamaica Kincaid reciting it. There’s no better way to approach a text anew than to hear it read aloud by someone with a carefully-turned interpretation.