Literature Core (1080-01 S2022)
In Gayl Jones’ “White Rat”, the author displays short anecdotes through the main character White Rat to show the effect of having white skin on a black person’s identity. White Rat’s comments on his past are said in more lighthearted sense, but it is clear in his stories, jokes, and his adamant arguing to others…
In Nalo Hopkinson’s “Shift”, the audience sees the perspectives of Caliban and Ariel and how, even though related, have very different views of the world. Caliban seems to have abandoned his mothers and sisters native ways and now finds safety and comfort in shifting his personality to the likes of the people he is around.…
In Toni Cade Bambara’s “Gorilla, My Love,” the narrator, a young black girl, suffers great sadness after repeatedly being deceived by the adults she encounters her life. These disappointments the narrator experiences can be interpreted as parallel to the experiences of blacks in the post-Civil War era. Due to the framing of the story from…
The first thing that is noticed when reading Gorilla, My Love is the use of nicknames for almost every character in the story. Peaches/Precious, Baby Jason, Big Brood, and Hunca Bubba to name some, are nicknames for the main character, Hazel, and her close family. All these characters are on the younger side, save for…
In the short story, “Gorilla, My love”, there is a common theme where the main character Hazel has no fear in the things she does or says. Throughout the text, Hazel has multiple examples of demonstrating this to the audience. We see this when she talks about going to the movie theater. She shows no…
Identify – In the short story “Gorilla, My Love” by Toni Cade, Cade emphasizes the formal element of deception, saying that “if you say Gorilla, My Love, you suppose to mean it. Just like when you say you goin to give me a party on my birthday, you gotta mean it. And if you say…
White Rat is a short story written by Gayl Jones in 1977. The White Rat is told through a narrator who is known to many of his close friends as the “white rat”, and this is because of his very white skin color while being an African-America. The short story details the White Rat’s relationship…
Gayl Jones’ short story “White Rat” (1977) involves the narration of a very light-skinned man called “White Rat”, his Black wife Maggie, and their son Little Henry, who has a clubbed foot. It starts in the present tense with Maggie returning to live with the narrator and their son after running off with J.T., who…
The short fiction story “White Rat”, by Gayl Jones, was published in 1977. It follows a light-skinned African-American, known only as “White Rat”, his wife, Maggie, and Little Henry, the first child of White Rat and Maggie born with club-foot. Due to White Rat’s light skin, he is often mistaken for a white person; however,…