sexuality.

 Mariah loved Lucy but yet saw her as someone with a complex history (the story
of daffodils - a reminder of colonial education- memorizing a poem about a
flower she had never seen)
 community:
 Page 18: (outside I seemed one way-inside I was another - I made pleasant little
noises that showed both modesty and appreciation) → others saw her as a
limited person, someone who doesn’t want to claim attention for oneself. -
Smoking a cigarette in front of me will show disrespect.
 The maid: she sees her as a primitive person; one that doesn’t know how to talk
or dance - a devoutly religious person that follows strict rules; one that we
should feel pity for.
 Family:
 Her mother: saw her as a naive person; someone who can be easily caused harm
to ( mentioning all the horror stories about other girls being killed). It shows
concern that Lucy won’t be able to take care of herself. But also saw her as a
small version of herself. (page 130: my mother knew me well, as well as she knew
herself, she even thought of us as identical).
 - someone who’s incapable of achieving her dreams whereas she supports her
son’s dreams.
 Her father saw her as someone not worthy of his care as she wasn’t one of his
kind (page 30: my father didn’t know me at all,).

                   
 The theme of dreams of lucy:
 
“The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of
unconscious activities of the mind. (Sigmund Freud)”
-.Freud identifies dreams as unconscious representations of unfulfilled desires.
“A dreamer can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that
he sees the dawn before the rest of the world (Oscar Wilde).”
“All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams. (Pail
Wellstone)”.
What’s the relation between dreams and identity?
      -Language - she dreams in English→ Even her mind is colonized.
      - Focus: unconscious →  feeling.
      -Dreams - Exposes the truth. (eg)-missing food back home- hating  
someone…etc
      - Unfulfilled desire. (sex)
 
Vocab: → a Deeper layer character: can’t be seen.
Characterization of Lucy → Internal through her narration
                                             →External through the perspective of other 
                                                characters.
                                             →through her dreams
                                            
Vocab: Foreshadowing: Foreshadowing is a literary device in which a writer gives
an advance hint of what is to come later in the story.

 
Dream 1: (Daydream) - page 3:
  “In a daydream, I used to have, all these places were points of happiness
to me; all these places were lifeboats to my small drowning soul, for I would
imagine myself entering and leaving them, and just that—entering and
leaving over and over again—would see me through a bad feeling I did not
have a name for.”
→ Lucy only imagines going in and out of these places but not expressing what’s
the purpose → she only desires to leave her home and escape and that’s it.
Without a purpose.
She immediately expects her life to change.
          → The dream is used as a device to Characterise Lucy and introduce the   main
themes (the theme of expectation vs reality.)
Lifeboat symbolism (Island,escape,rescue)
Background - Establishing context.
Drifting - the purpose is unclear.

Dream 2: page 7
“and so I lay down on my bed and dreamt I was eating a bowl of pink
mullet and green figs cooked in coconut milk, and it had been cooked
by my grandmother, which was why the taste of it pleased me so, for
she was the person I liked best in all the world and those were the
things I liked best to eat also.”

-Homesickness - warmth (not heat)--> aggressive.

Color pink → soft
-Lucy personality/Identity → what she cares about
                                                         → In contrast to other characters.
         - The dream highlights the alienation of Lucy.
She presents her grandmother as a maternal figure more than her mother - contrast
→  reflects the relationship between Lucy and her mother.

Dream3: page 8-9

“ I dreamt then that I was holding in my hands one of my old cotton-flannel

nightgowns, and it was printed with beautiful scenes of children playing with
Christmas-tree decorations. The scenes printed on my nightgown were so
real that I could actually hear the children laughing. I felt compelled to
know where this nightgown came from, and I started to examine it
furiously, looking for the label. I found it just where a label usually is, in
the back, and it read “Made in Australia.”
-The main idea is to give a cool context of her heritage and her identity when she comes
to a new country and she still feels empty.
Struggle to identify with a new environment.
The word choice: description of her room and how it relates to Australia. (cell and
prison).
Looking for a label: Her own identity.

Dream4:page 14
 “I was remembering a dream I had had about them: Lewis was chasing me
around the house. I wasn’t wearing any clothes. The ground on which I was
running was yellow as if it had been paved with cornmeal. Lewis was chasing
me around and around the house, and though he came close he could never
catch up with me. Mariah stood at the open windows saying, Catch her,
Lewis, catch her. Eventually, I fell down a hole, at the bottom of which
were some silver and blue snakes.”

Symbolism: 
Nakedness - vulnerability.
Chased by lewis - Othering 
Road- yellow brick → symbols hope.
→ reflects her adolescence and unconscious sexual desire to lewis
Dreams show desires: what the character does not explicitly say.

Devices that dreams create: Characterisation - Contrast - Metaphor 

Foreshadowing- Context - where she comes from -how she is now
feeling (emotion)...etc

Themes analysis: (Sex, Race, Class)

 How/When/Where does Lucy encounter this?

 What is her response? Why?
 How does Lucy’s experience build the theme?
 Growing to become her person and escaping the reality her mother created in
her.
 Sex liberation: tied to her religious background, To her parent’s relationship, and
her issues with her father.
 The fact that she doesn’t look at sex as an emotional connection but she only
sees the physical part of it.
 Race: 
  “ a sympathetic tone to his voice, and then he told me a story about an uncle he
had who had gone to Canada and raised monkeys, and of how after a while the
uncle loved monkeys so much and was so used to being around them that he found
actual human beings hard to take” → the choice of the animal.
 Race:
 Chapter 1 - Differentiation of the physical appearance: eg) Mariah pale yellow
skin, yellow hair; children; yellow heads.
 Page 32: 
 Page 39-40 I was looking forward to telling you that  I have Indian blood →
Separating herself from Lucy. (systematic racism -  tied up with the concept of
white privilege).
 Page 87:  extra room - a privilege → Irony since 
 Page 156: ‘’far away trophy”
Class: 
 The maid: assuming she can’t dance and associating her to religious backgrounds.
 All the members of the organization were well off but they made no connection
between comfort and 
 But then I thought that a person coming from Sweden is a little bit different
than a person like me. 
 Page 58: “the girl”
Infantilism embedded in the racist culture: create that sense of high rocky.
 Page 85-86: 

Homework: look at Lucy in the last chapter ---> reference to mothers.

Individual work:
“The afternoon passed. For a very long moment, I wondered what my mother was
doing just then, and I saw her face; it was the face she used to have when she
loved me without reservation.” pg155
 Lucy longed for her mother and wished to see her → reflect homesickness.
 When she loved me without reservation: this sentence reflects that Lucy was
offered two types of love by her mother: one when she loved her without
reservation and the other when she loved her but with limitations → This
reflects the mother-daughter conflict they had: The mother always wanted Lucy
to resemble her and to grow into a copy of her when she does not do so that’s
when the limitations appear!
 The mother desire to entirely own Lucy; even shape her future.
 
  At the corner, she hugged me, kissed my cheek, and wished me good luck.
Something in that moment, something buried underneath, made tears come to our
eyes, but before they could spill out we turned and went our separate ways. pg158