Do you remember how it is to be a child? Sometimes it is difficult but it is oftentimes easy and extremely secure. Being a child includes having a different view at the world than from parents or another adult’s point of view. A child is not able to understand everything and is not supposed to do it, this I why parents lie for their children.
To protect them from the difficult world and from people and situations that is not necessary for a child to observe.In the text Mount Pleasant the basic thought of being a child is represent. In the story Mount Pleasant have the writer used a very spectacular type of narrative technique and an unusual language. The story is written by this technique because of the plot in the story.
The writer wants us to feel like children when we read the text. This is why Mary-Louise Buxton put us down in the little girl Elizabeth’s point of view and thoughts and makes us watch the story with children eyes.The story Mount Pleasant is written by Mary-Louise Buxton and is about the little girl Elizabeth and her everyday life in her new neighborhood. The story is not characterized as a normal story with the touch of the Hollywood model with an opening, point of no return and at the end a fade-out. The story is only an all normal day from the everyday life of the little girl Elizabeth without any critical moments for an adult, but it might be for a little girl as Elizabeth.
The story is written with an explicit first-person narrator and could be seen as a diary from the little girls Elizabeth at age about six-seven years. “He’s maybe nine or ten, not that much older than me” (p. 2 l. 58).
It is difficult to tell her exact age because of her spoken language is more like to be younger than the age of six-seven years. “Eeny meeny miny mo” (p. 2 l. 1) is a rhyme used by very young children, but this rhyme does also determine that the language is very childish and therefore humorous because we can relate it to real life children.The language is odd and all the way trough it is this childish humorous slang and nickname terms and it is used in a way that it is easy to almost hear the childish way of talking when the story is being read. Mary-Louise Buxton uses a lot of different words that underline that it is this childish way of talking and that the story is told by a little girl, for an example is Elizabeth’s father giving her nicknames, such as Boo Boo.
Other different things are likewise given different nicknames such as the “Granny Omi’s duckering ball” (p.2 l. 49 and other examples. Mary-Louise Buxton plays with the words such as a child would do and this is often being expressed.
All these different nicknames and child word underlines that it is an explicit first-person narrator and the narrator is the little girls Elizabeth herself. There are three characters in the story that is the most important, the parents and Elizabeth. Already from the start we get the impression that Elizabeth’s mother is an adversary or a foe that she needs to make a distance to.She does not strongly dislike her mother but she disagrees in all the strict rules that her mother makes up. Elizabeth is not able to play rough like boys as she wants to just as her older brother.
Her mother wants to raise her as a noble young lady that not has to walk around in all messed cloths. Elizabeth sees the father as a total opposite person of her mother, she thinks that her father is a nice and friendly man and most important less strict. He is also more down at the level of a child and mention Elizabeth with sweet nicknames such as Boo Boo.These ideas that Elizabeth has about her father is maybe a wrong thought or maybe not because we hear in the story that he very carrying, carry Elizabeth and her sister to their bedroom but shouts at the dog as it was not anything and he is also slapping the dog with a newspaper, but it is not only the father that does this, the whole family do not seem to care about their dog and treat it like a part of the family.
It is not really that clear which symbols that the writer Mary-Louise Buxton, had I her mind when she wrote the story but some of the symbols could be the picture that Elizabeth finds of a nine-ten years old boy.They talk about that the boy could have been living in the house before and by the time they talk about this, Elizabeth feels like somebody is touching her or walking around when she is sleeping. This could be a symbol of that there is happening paranormal things in the house and by the time that Elizabeths father says that the picture of the boy could be put at the mental piece among the other family members and that he could be a member of the family and suddenly the picture keeps falling down.This could be a symbol of that something is going to happen in the family such as somebody is dying or falling down and by the time that we hear about the picture falling down Elizabeth keeps talking about different things. The most important thing she is telling about is that she hang at a drainpipe and was close to fall down.
This could be related to their way of living. They are not having that much money and things could be falling apart such as the picture falls down.
