Use of Language in How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents...

Use of Language in How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez In her novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Dominican author Julia Alvarez demonstrates how words can become strange and lose their meaning. African American writer Toni Morrison in her novel Sula demonstrates how words can wound in acts of accidental verbal violence when something is overheard by mistake. In each instance, one sees how the writer manipulates language, its pauses and its silences as well as its words, in order to enhance the overall mood of each work. In Toni Morrisons Sula, the reader meets the protagonist, Sula, and her friend Nel when both girls are roughly twelve years old. Both girls are black, intelligent, and dreaming of†¦show more content†¦She had no center, no speck around which to grow (Morrison 118-119). For Sula, there is no other against which she can then define herself. Having rejected her community and her family, she wanders, trying somehow to define who she is. Sula turns to Shadrack, the local madman, at first because she worries that he saw what happened to Chicken Little, but then because his words truly do comfort her. Here again, one seems the way that Morrison manipulates language and its meaning in that what Shadrack doesnt say are just as significant as what he does say. Shadrack makes Sula a promise- Always. Morrison writes, ...he tried to think of something to say to comfort her, something to stop the hurt from spilling out of her eyes. So he had said always, so she would not have to be afraid... (Morrison 157) This promise, which conveys to Sula a sense of her own permanence, serves to take away from her two essential components of a healthy conscience-fear and compassion. Julia Alvarez also uses language to show how the four Garcia girls adjust to living in a new, and to them alien, culture. The protagonist in this novel is the family Garcia de la Torre, a wealthy, aristocratic family from the Santo Domingo, who can trace their genealogy back to the SpanishShow MoreRelated The Character of Yolanda Garcia in How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and !Yo!2539 Words   |  11 PagesThe Cha racter of Yolanda Garcia in How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and !Yo!  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   Julia Alvarez develops the character of Yolanda Garcia in some different and similar ways in her two books How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and its sequel !Yo!. 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