I Used To Live Here Once

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I Used to Live Here Once Chandra Gomez Introduction to Literature ENG125 Heather AltfeldFisher November 21, 2011 I Used to Live Here Once There have been many stories written about journeys taken in life. “I Used to Live Here Once”, by Jean Rhys (Clugston, 2010) is an exceptional example of this type of story. The author takes its readers on an elaborate journey through a time in which the protagonist seeks to gain closure to a life lived before the present time. In this paper we will analyze the theme of this short story and preview literary elements which contribute to the theme. The literary elements we will interpret to help comprehend the meaning of this story and its theme will be setting, character, tone, point of view, plot, and symbolism. We will reflect on how these selected literary elements impact the narrative theme. Let us begin analyzing the theme by introducing the author of this story. One could say the main theme to this story is about a woman’s spiritual journey or reflection of her past life. Our author, Jean Rhys, born in 1890, was the child of an English father and a Creole white mother in the British Colony of Dominica in the West Indies (Hulme, 2001). Her ancestry came from an English background. Rhys moved to England when she was 17 to attended school. Although this is where she spent the rest of her life, Dominica would remain an important place to her as we can see in much of her literary works (Wilson, 1998). Her move to England perhaps had her feeling out casted because of where she came from. One might say this disconnection from her roots could have made Rhys feel truly alienated (Hulme, 2001). This feeling of detachment reflects the theme of our present story. Theme is defined by Webster’s dictionary online as “a unifying idea that is a recurrent element in literary or artistic work.” (Websters, 2011).
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