The Significance of the Vernacular in Hopkinson’s “Shift”

In Nalo Hopkinson’s short story “Shift”, the author utilizes the juxtaposition of Ariel’s and Caliban’s diction to emphasize the contrast between their perspectives on their shared heritage. The narrative continuously switches accounts from Caliban’s second person view to Ariel’s first person view until the two characters come into conflict and share direct dialogue. In protest of Caliban’s romantic endeavors, Ariel expresses, “Why you can’t leave white woman alone? You don’t see what them do to you?”(145). Caliban then retaliates by remarking on her dialect: “You are our mother’s creature…Look at you, trying so hard to be ‘island’, talking like you just come off the boat”(145). Hopkinson represents the diction of each opposing character not only through the grammatical fluency and dialect of their speech, but also by the typography itself. Though one would not typically consider the typography of speech when evaluating the characters, the italicized nature of Caliban’s speech invites a more sophisticated characterization of his conscience, which is consistent with his normative manner of speaking. Especially when considered in contrast to Ariel’s bold and chanting chatter, Caliban’s desertion of his connate language appears more weighted, as does the literal severing of perspectives between the dual narrators of Caliban and Ariel. When Caliban refers to Ariel’s attempt to be more ‘island’, he refers to her abandonment of modern grammar in favor of the vernacular language of the island from which the two are originally from. Similar to their namesake characters within Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the two represent opposite perspectives: Caliban rejecting his cultural heritage via disdain towards his native tongue and Ariel representing the adherence to such heritage through her loyalty to her mother’s patois. This cultural gap in dictation alongside the physical gaps between narrated perspectives reflects a severance in the ideologies and outlooks of Caliban and Ariel regarding their racial and cultural identities.