This article is an excerpt from the
autobiography of “The Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole". It
highlights and follows the common characteristics of a memoir. The nurse uses
direct narration. The text is a reflection, of the nurse's life. Due to
the speech used in first person, the dialogue provides her interpretation of
struggles and her reflection of past events. There are specific instances where
she offers her hindsight wisdom in context with the several personal encounters
she has had- retelling stories that express her understanding about the
perception of death. From this, it could be concluded that the text aims
to review on the nurses past experiences and thus argue on the concept of
death, based on the inclusions made in the experiences. It
does not intend to persuade an audience or have any specific influences, but
rather to be more of personal narrative.
The memoir initially talks about how
Seacole was surrounded by people infected with yellow fever which was an
epidemic in the 1850’s. The setting is the island of Jamaica. Seacole retells
of her encounters as a caretaker of the sick. The death surrounding her; she
explains as “dreadful”. Among the other stories she stays on the topic of
one young man Seacole was fond of and rather attached to. She retells of his
passing and how it brought out and made her connect it with a mother- son
relation. She then makes a statement saying that no one should be ashamed of
the fear of death. The article is solely based the idea of; on one’s perception
of death and how life revolves around how scared one is.
Relatively the tone of this article
is sad due to the deaths Seacole talks of. The content and language are used to
emphasize the sorrowful tone and serious mood. The audience is left with the heavy
and intense feeling of death as Seacole begins the article with “still
remembering an island for its suffering and gloom”. From the beginning the tone
is set driving the rest of the article to follow the same tone and mood.
The story is not objective but
rather bias since it is a memoir and offers a reflection of personal stories and conclusions. It follows a constrict structure of
self-evaluation and her perspective therefore making it hard for any
interpretation by the reader. The story uses personal pronouns such as “I” in
order to ensure the story stays very personal. The use of imagery helps set the
mood and tone also.
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