Caribbean Literature- In the Night Summary

 

Unit-III- Short story

In The Night

                                - Jamaica Kincaid

About the Author

            Jamaica Kincaid was born in St. John’s Antigua in 1949. She is widely praised for her works of short fiction, novels, and essays in which she explores the tenuous relationship between mother and daughter as well as themes of anti-colonialism. In 1973, when she began to publish her writing, she changed her name primarily because of disapproval of her writing. She wrote for The Village Voice and Ingenue. Her short fiction appeared in The Paris Review and The New Yorker, were her novel Lucy was originally serialized.

Summary

            The short story is about the life of a night-soil man and his family. The night-soil men walk in the night time. Night soil-men are the people who collect the human excrement collected at night from toilets of cesspool. They are walking on the damp ground in straw shoes which makes a scratchy sound.

             In narrator’s dream, there is a rainfall. It was a night time she hear different types of sounds such as sound of a cricket, sound of a church bell, sound of house creaking and so on. Mr. Gishard was wearing a nice white suit standing under a Cedar tree which is full bloom. He was holding a glass full of rum. The narrator can hear a baby being born. She sees the physical appearance of baby. The baby and the narrator were talking to pasture. The baby is eating green grass with its soft and pink lips. The narrator’s mother says “Little Miss, little Miss”. The narrator’s mother wakes her up from the sleep that she made the bed wet.  

After she wakes, she recalls the dream where she sees the light in the mountain. Then she realises that it was a Jablesse. Jablesse is a person who can turn into anything goes up into mountains and gallivant. It is a character in Caribbean folklore. She was born as a human but her vanity leads her to make deals with the devil, giving him her soul for eternal youth, thereby being transformed into a demon. She always tries to look like a beautiful woman. So, one should careful when they see a beautiful woman. Jablesse is different from man because of their eyes which shines like lamps.

The narrator describes her father who is a night -soil men. He is handsome. He is very nice and kind person. Once while running to catch a bus, he fell and broke his ankle and had to spend a week in hospital. This made him miserable. He likes to do sit on a big stone under a mahogany tree and watch small children playing cricket. He is always reading botany books and knows a lot about rubber plantations and rubber trees. On special days he wears a brown hat and brown leather shoes which he ordered from England. But on ordinary days, he goes with bareheaded. On her mother’s birthday, he always buys her some nice clothes as a gift. He promised her that he will take them to see something he has read about called the circus.