HW#23

Jamaica Kincaid, My Brother, FSG, 1997

Section 2 of My Brother:

The second part of this book focuses more on the brother’s perspective and how Jamaica thinks he may have felt during the process of his illness and finally his death if he was thinking at all during his final moments. A brief history on her brother is given and it allows the reader to get more of a feel of the brother’s personality and the way he went about doing things.

1.) “That night as he lay dying and calling the names of his brothers and his mother, he did not call my name, and I was neither glad nor sad about this.”

-  Because of the lack of a bond between her brother and herself, her brother not calling out her name, affected her in a way that she was not sure about also due to their relationship.

2.) “He had read in a novel written by me about a mother who had tried and tried and failed and failed to abort the third and last of her three male children. And when he was dying he asked me if that mother was his mother and if that child was himself...”

-  Despite his being a bit slow and uneducated he picked up on the fact that the story was about him. Although he had not mentioned it before for whatever reason before, his illness and inevitable death drove him to ask whether or not that story was about him.  

3.) A great sadness over came me, and the source of the sadness was the deep feeling I always had about him:  that he had died without ever understanding or knowing , or being able to let the world in which he lived know, who he was; that who he really was- not a single sense of identity  but all the complexities of who he was –he could not express fully: his fear of being laughed at, his fear of meeting with the scorn of the people he knew best were overwhelming and he could not live with all of it openly.”

- Full description of who her brother basically was and her thoughts on how he felt even though he was so well known and liked my many people.

     The depiction of death through the eyes of Jamaica Kincaid is one that I hope I never have to deal with because of its gruesomeness and the way she is forced to think about her brothers sadness and basically carry his weight because it was something he was never able to get rid of due to his position in society and/or his position in their home. The way she describes how she thinks about her brother is something that bothers me because it makes me wonder if death always causes these thoughts amongst friends and family.