Jackie Kay - Owl
Årsprøve i skriftlig engelsk – delprøve 2
A - Jackie Kay ”Owl”
The faint, almost invisible, line between child and adult, carefree and responsible, becomes more and more blurry and grey the closer you get to it. First, it is said that you reach adulthood and step into the real world, when you confirm your faith in God, but thrusting that threshold yourself, you just know you are not yet an adult. So then, you postpone it until the age of 18. By then you should be starting your career, or at least have an idea of where you are going, and more importantly you are now legally an adult, with the right to vote and take care of others, but also with the hard realities of facing up to your mistakes. Coming to terms with who you are as you grow up and as an adult is not always the easiest thing. The short story “Owl” by Jackie Kay treats exactly this subject, of whom you end out to be, and what things you choose to hold on to in life.
Jackie Kay chooses in her story to make use of the first-person narrator, and this makes it easier as a reader to identify yourself with the main character Anita. The reader reminisces to own childhood memories and feel like they are in close contact with Anita’s feelings, almost as if they were the reader’s own. When Anita tells her story, she does so by starting out in a flashback from her childhood, with the memory that started it all. The time she went on holiday with her parents and Marion and hers, and they first discovered the screeching barn owl, which would become the foundation for their lifelong friendship. This use of flashback gives the reader a more precise conception of who Anita was as a child, and what made her Barn. As most children Barn was selfish and unable to sympathize. She was not held back by leaving out Sandra when it came to who caused the crowd, and keen neither on giving her an owl-related nickname to include her or even changing her own. When it came to telling white lies to uphold the sacredness of her and
A - Jackie Kay ”Owl”
The faint, almost invisible, line between child and adult, carefree and responsible, becomes more and more blurry and grey the closer you get to it. First, it is said that you reach adulthood and step into the real world, when you confirm your faith in God, but thrusting that threshold yourself, you just know you are not yet an adult. So then, you postpone it until the age of 18. By then you should be starting your career, or at least have an idea of where you are going, and more importantly you are now legally an adult, with the right to vote and take care of others, but also with the hard realities of facing up to your mistakes. Coming to terms with who you are as you grow up and as an adult is not always the easiest thing. The short story “Owl” by Jackie Kay treats exactly this subject, of whom you end out to be, and what things you choose to hold on to in life.
Jackie Kay chooses in her story to make use of the first-person narrator, and this makes it easier as a reader to identify yourself with the main character Anita. The reader reminisces to own childhood memories and feel like they are in close contact with Anita’s feelings, almost as if they were the reader’s own. When Anita tells her story, she does so by starting out in a flashback from her childhood, with the memory that started it all. The time she went on holiday with her parents and Marion and hers, and they first discovered the screeching barn owl, which would become the foundation for their lifelong friendship. This use of flashback gives the reader a more precise conception of who Anita was as a child, and what made her Barn. As most children Barn was selfish and unable to sympathize. She was not held back by leaving out Sandra when it came to who caused the crowd, and keen neither on giving her an owl-related nickname to include her or even changing her own. When it came to telling white lies to uphold the sacredness of her and