At the Bottom of the River (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Jamaica Kincaid
- First Published: 1982
- Type of Plot: Pastoral
- Time of Work: The mid-twentieth century
- Setting: St. Johns, Antigua, West Indies
- Principal Characters: The unnamed protagonist, The unnamed man, The unnamed woman
- Genres: Short fiction, Impressionistic literature
- Subjects: Girls, Maturation or coming of age, Self-discovery, Mothers, Parents and children, Philosophy or philosophers, Caribbean, Magic or magicians, Blacks, Gender roles, Immortality, Nature, Psychology or psychologists, Self, Supernatural, Superstition, Surrealism
- Locales: Antigua, West Indies
The Story
In the first of the six sections that constitute this story, the third-person narrator defines a “terrain” that is at once external and internal. From the mountains of its origin to the flat plain of its mouth, the river poses a philosophical riddle of its own cycle of creation and destruction, which awaits the human sensibility “that shall then give all this a meaning.” The unnamed narrator then shifts abruptly to describe “a man who lives in a world bereft of its very nature.” As an individual, the man is incapable of reconciling his own alienated...
[The entire page is 2696 words long]
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