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Rain Child |
作者Author /  Margaret Laurence 瑪格麗特.勞倫斯 |
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Rain Child
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image
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Major
characters in their power relations |
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Whites
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Africans
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the head mistress Hilda Poovey.
Mrs. Clare Mackie
David Mackie |
Kwaale's father
the owner of the oil palm plantation
Dr. Quansah. |
Ms. Violet Nedden |
Ruth
Ayesha as a stolen slave
Yindo as an internal migrant to work |
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Ref. Ethnic groups in
Ghana:
"In 1960 roughly 100
linguistic and cultural groups were recorded in Ghana. . . . The major
ethnic groups in Ghana include the Akan,
Ewe, Mole-Dagbane, Guan, and Ga-Adangbe. " (source) |
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Tomorrow-Tamer,
[where "Rain Child is from]: "The stories |
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are set in Ghana in the period
immediately prior to its constitution as an
independent nation in 1957, and so depict a society in transition, in
which the old
and the new come into violent collision at every turn.
Notwithstanding the
specifically African context in which they are elaborated, however, the
themes are
essentially those that appear elsewhere in the Laurentian canon, those
having to
do with the nature and foundation of
identity, the constraints upon human
communication, the true essence of freedom, the complex interplay
between
change and tradition. As in Laurence's other books, these
themes are typically
articulated through the central metaphor of exile,
reinforced in many instances by
biblical imagery of the fall, of exodus, and of the quest for a
Promised Land. What
we are witnessing in other words are the preoccupations that haunt the
entire
corpus of Laurence's fiction, worked out on this occasion within the
framework of a
specific political situation which invests them with a local habitation
and a name, a
particularized content and a set of appropriate metaphors. And as in
Laurence's
other works, the unvoiced question
hovering over nearly all of these stories is that
of the basis that can be established for relationship with the Other,
the "Other"
conceived in both a personal and a cultural sense. |
("Dancing to a New Song
The Limits of Community in Laurence's
The Tomorrow-Tamer " David Lucking )
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