Loose Change Essay

657 Words3 Pages
The short-story ”Loose Change” is written by Andrea Levy in 2005. Andrea Levy is a British author, born in London with Jamaican parents, so she is of an Afro-Jamaican descent. The story is about a “Londoner” single-mom (the I-narrator) – who is helped out by another foreign woman in the lavatory when she was in need of coins for the tampon machine. The narrator wanted to give back the money in some way so she invited Laylor - the foreign woman - for a cup of tea. At the café they met Laylor’s brother and the two siblings had a discussion in their native language. The narrator found out that Laylor and her brother were emigrants from Uzbekistan. After she found out Laylor’s situation, she saw Laylor in another way. She began to think about her own grandmother who once had been in the same situation as Laylor when she first came to England from the Caribbean. Her grandmother once had told her about a stranger who offered her a warm bed for the night, and that it was because of the benevolence that had kept her alive. So the narrator was considering if she should help Laylor or not and in the end she just walked out of the café. One of the themes of the story can be charity, which is shown through the narrator’s thoughts and actions toward Laylor. Or it could also be selfishness shown in the end of the story when the narrator decided not to help Laylor. The narrator is, in her really own words, a “Londoner”. She makes it very clear in the beginning that she doesn’t make friends with stranger. After she had heard about Laylor’s story she immediately thought for herself “Why me?” and I think that it makes her a little bit selfish that she thought Laylor consciously were trying to mess up her life. But then she thought of her own grandmother and began to pity Laylor and that makes her a little bit benevolent too. She really had a hard time figuring out whether to
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