Engl 302 Daffodil; Kincaid, Jamaica. Lucy

Daffodils

Why? Why are you so desperate of showing me this? Are you expecting me to see a open dream of bliss? I really don’t see it, but it makes me want to throw a fit. I don’t want to see them like I told you. You don’t know what I’ve been through. I have to memories a song about it, but not actually value it. If you were willing to take time and listen to my reasons than just roasting me like I’m possessed by demons. Maybe you understand and accept with a hand. We both see things differently. We value this object differently. Just like the novel Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid, how Lucy takes William Wordsworth, “I wandered lonely as a cloud” poem in order to show difference in perception for colonizer and the colonized. The perceptions between Lucy and Mariah of this single object, which is the daffodils. The eyes of beauty Mariah sees and the reflection of false identity.

Lucy and Mariah have a disparate perceptions of daffodils. As Lucy states, “I did not know what these flowers were, and so it was a mystery to me why I wanted to kill them. I wished I had an enormous scythe; I would just walk down the path, dragging it alongside me, and I would cut these flowers down where they emerged from the ground.” (29) Lucy sees these daffodils as reminder and reflection of a colonial education that forced her to memorize a poem about a flower she’d never seen, while ignoring her native land. She is forced to endure all of Britain’s teachings, but yet she still feels as an outsider because she cannot embrace British traditions. This explains why she vows to erase the memories of that poem from her mind. Her initial aspiration is to not just rid her mind of the poem, but to also forget the history of her country being colonized by Britain. For Mariah's side of view, the daffodils is her favorite flower. The daffodil to her means beauty, sorrow, bitterness and the the entry of spring. Mariah of course does not understand the antagonism in Lucy’s voice as she is telling the story, and intentionally brings the daffodils into her life after Lucy explains her reflection. As Mariah leads Lucy to a field of daffodils in an attempt to change Lucy’s feelings about the flower, Lucy’s hostility toward daffodils only increases. She wants to demolish the daffodils. Not only does the daffodils poetry as colonial injustice, but these flowers also represent Mariah’s colonial determination. The determination to make Lucy see the world as she does. The daffodils point to Lucy and Mariah’s opposing perspectives of themselves. They represent the symbol of themselves, by showing