What Have You Been Doing Lately Essay

, Research Paper

& # 8220 ; What I Have Been Doing Lately & # 8221 ; is the rolling journey of a cryptic storyteller. The narrative begins with her prevarication in bed when the buzzer rings. Her province of ( un ) consciousness is non revealed. ( Does she wake up? ) The scenes of the narrative displacement within an vague and obscure clip and infinite. A narrative of approaching and traveling, return and going, the storyteller walks and walks, go forthing familiar landscapes to come in unfamiliar 1s to return to the familiar once more.

The subdivisions of the narrative merge finally into a round narration, a buzzer pealing in the farewell and in the shutting lines. With an extra word, a turn of sentence construction, Kincaid differentiates the first subdivision from the 2nd and transforms the bureau of the topic. She heeds the call of the buzzer in the first subdivision by running downstairs. Quick. In the 2nd portion the action is slowed, & # 8220 ; I went downstairs and opened the door but there was no 1 at that place.

In the first subdivision, she walks past the monkey, simply observing its being. In the sec

ond portion, she throws several stones at it. Her inability to construct a span strands her on the shore of the big organic structure of H2O in the first subdivision, while in the 2nd subdivision, she pays a menu and rides a boat across.

This tendency does non keep to be wholly true throughout the two subdivisions. Although the storyteller is much more active in the 2nd subdivision, one of the most arresting scenes in portion one is when the storyteller asks & # 8220 ; what & # 8217 ; s down at that place? & # 8221 ; and intentionally throws herself into a hole. Not merely does she throw herself in, but she reverses herself. Tiing in with my reading of the narrative as a dream, I would place this is an illustration of limpid dreaming ; the ability to straight command, alteration, or pull strings a desirable or unwanted facet of a dream. This ability, nevertheless, is a slippery one, attesting infrequently, non normally a regular happening. At the terminal of the narrative, the storyteller is still trapped in the tintinnabulation buzzer rhythm, and is suffering. Alternatively of the unconscious resorting to clarity, she comforts herself, strokes her ain caput.