Imagine being a teenage girl and embarking on a dangerous journey all by yourself. Many people would not be able to achieve such voyage. Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid tells of a story of nineteen-year-old Lucy leaving her British ruled Caribbean for the great American dream. Lucy arrives in America to work as an au pair for a wealthy family. She dreams of something different; something better for her future and she believes America is the place that would help her in achieving her goals.
Lucy is most definitely an immigration story. Lucy leaves her homeland to travel to America and learn to lead a successful life. However upon arrival, Lucy is extremely disappointed with her new surroundings. She was always secluded at home, but in America she experienced an altered type of isolation. Lucy dreamed, for years, of all the places that she would have the opportunity to see and visit. Yet, when she finally…show more content… Lucy experienced her first elevator ride, her first time eating refrigerated food, and her first time being in an apartment. Lucy is aware that she has to grow accustomed to her new home but she cannot stop feeling a sense of sadness. Back in the Caribbean, she would read books about people in her exact situation and she would judge them rather quickly and harshly for she could not imagine why a person who so desperately longed to leave their home would want to come back after going to the place that they only dreamed about. However according to Kincaid Lucy thought, “But now I, too, felt that I wanted to be back where I came from. I understood it, I knew where I stood there. If I had had to draw a picture of my future then, it would have been a large gray patch surrounded by black, blacker, blackest” (6). Lucy was afraid; she was afraid of being completely alone, failing, losing her identity and self-worth and so on. Every immigrant has the same fears as Lucy when they first disembark on a new world and new