Sunday, November 8, 2015

"Night Women" by Edwidge Danticat

This is Cathy.

In this story, the protagonist hints at her prostitution via the usage of sexual, provocative imagery. The way she describes her son, still young and untouched by her profession, is occasionally jarring: she depicts him “[squirming] and [groaning], as though he’s already discovered that there is pleasure in touching himself” (p. 204). Even when he slaps insects on his forehead, she compares the “tiny blood spots on his forehead” to the marks earned if he “had spent the whole night kissing a woman with wide-open flesh wounds on her face” (p. 204). The protagonist’s choice of analogy in this line reveals the sexual nature of her thoughts throughout this story. 

No comments:

Post a Comment