Lucy By Jamaica Kincaid

1014 Words5 Pages
The past of a person seems to always reciprocate and manifest itself in the future. In the novel Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid, the author explores the idea of characterization through the means of relationships both past and present. The protagonist of the story Lucy, illustrates throughout the entire novel of the shaky dynamic between both her father and her mother. It is in these crumbling bonds that Lucy’s true characterization is revealed. The reader is able to perceive an all encompassed view of Lucy through the means of multiple characters. Through the author's motif of flashbacks, Lucy’s characterization is built surrounding the details of her father and her mother. Lucy is struck with a regular dissatisfaction of men within her love life due to the disenchanted perception of her distant father. Kincaid repeats…show more content…
In one of her first sexual encounters, Lucy has short relationship with a nameless boy from her library. This fling “ended just as it began, without words.” Lucy quickly finds herself bored with the boy, and “when we passed each other on the street he never stopped to ask me why”(51). This is just the first instance that she avoids forming a deeper attachment to a man that she enjoys sexual experiences with. As the boy fell out of her favor, Lucy had little apprehension in removing him from her life. The next love Kincaid describes in Lucy’s life seem much more genuine on the surface. She is undecided on whether Hugh is attractive or not, but she becomes interested in him when he asks, “Where in the West Indies are you from?”(65). Her love affair with Hugh appears to be based upon her honest interest in Hugh as a person, but Lucy soon reveals that the opposite is
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