Annie John Characters

Annie is presented as an extraordinarily bright and talented girl, but also as a series of contradictions that make her seem quite typical in many ways. For example, as a young girl, Annie cannot bear to think of her mother disapproving of her; at the same time, however, she has a strong independent streak that leads her to act up when she is sent first to deportment lessons and later to piano lessons, so that she is dismissed from both. Similarly, when Annie’s mother discovers she has been playing marbles, Annie both lies and hides the marbles to protect the secret, even though her secret has been exposed and her mother does not believe her.

Annie’s mother is a central character who is viewed differently as Annie grows up. The young Annie worships her mother and wants to be exactly like her. As Annie begins to grow up, her mother appears to Annie to be overbearing, dominant, and a bit contradictory in her assertions that Annie has to become her own person but also has to follow her mother’s rules. Cumulatively, though, a portrait of Annie’s mother emerges as a woman who separated herself from her own mother by adopting specifically Western habits. She wants to inculcate Annie into that culture, although she herself is not completely certain of her place within it.

Ma Chess is one of the most engaging figures in the novel, although readers do not see very much of her. Annie’s maternal grandmother, Ma Chess is presented as a powerful...

Annie Victoria John, as she imagines her mother might address letters to her, is the figure of fear both of changing and not changing that is present in every adolescent. She dominates the poetic narrative through her internal monologues, her dreams, her fantasies, her distant associations, and her precise observations of all that goes on around her. Her steady pace through anxieties over origins, identity, sexuality, and maturation arrives at an uneasy anticipation of independence in England—ironically so, given that Antigua, in Kincaid’s childhood, was still a British colony. Similarly, it is just as Annie leaves that she realizes the potential for a reunion with her mother’s love, yet she knows too that she must leave her mother for that reunion to become real in the future.

The protagonist’s mother emerges from the ambivalent images bestowed on her by her daughter’s passage from childhood to adolescence. Annie’s mother appears at times as tender and at others as nearly monstrous. Her compassion, however, is never far from the reader’s grasp; she cares for Annie’s father, modeling loving adult relationships. Yet she also knows that Annie must become herself, and her seemingly harsh responses to her daughter are only typical, caring parental warnings and discipline.

Alexander John, Annie’s father, is perceived by her as distant and aloof until she moves into puberty. Actually, her father is a kind and nurturing man but is...

Annie Victoria John

Annie Victoria John, a smart, sensitive young black girl growing up in Antigua, in the British West Indies. Annie identifies with her mother and has a hard time separating herself, but she is a bright, imaginative, high-spirited girl who has a hard time following her mother’s instructions and orders. She leaves home at the age of seventeen.

Annie John

Annie John, Annie’s mother, who married a carpenter much older than herself. She gave birth to Annie at the age of thirty. Annie’s point of view is so intently focused on how her mother deals with her that it is hard to get a precise sense of who the mother is. Her attempts to discipline Annie and force her to...