A Gift For My Mother Theme

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‘A Gift for My Mother’ by Viv McDade Living with parents, who no longer hold much love for each other or are starting to fall out of love, is hard on any child. And when the economy is tight, it only gets worse. Always wishing for what is on the other side of the fence, where the grass is greener and the sun shines brighter. In a society where poverty and pride live side by side, it can be tough to be that child. A pure hearted and innocent attempt to help from such a child can be torn to pieces by the pride and hurt dignity of the parents. A Gift for My Mother by Viv McDade is a good example of such a situation. The main character, from whose point of view we get the story told, is called Lucy, she is ten year old and living with her mother and father in South Africa. She appears to be fairly smart, claiming to be the only one in her class able to spell illiterate…show more content…
Her father is very devoted to her, always willing to help her with homework. He even calls her ‘my precious’ (page 8, line 16). The minute Lucy hears her father’s car in the driveway she leaves her homework and rushes out to greet him. The love between them is obvious. The relationship between Lucy and her mother is also one of love, but a different kind. They do love each other, but the relationship seems more strained than Lucy’s relationship with her father. When the mother becomes dreamy and thinks about the other side of the railway line, Lucy says that: ‘But that evening they weren’t on her mind long enough to make her angry or sad…’ (page 8, line 12-13). It is implied that is saddens and angers the mother that she has to live the way she does. When her thoughts stray away, her mind leaves her daughter behind and even though Lucy doesn’t show it, she is hurt by this dreaming of greener pastures her mother does, apparently very often. Reading between the lines, one may conclude that Lucy is a of a bit of a Daddy’s
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