|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: thought she must be the daughter of wealthy people; but she could
not, for some reason or other, tell her family name. Perhaps she
could not pronounce it well, and was afraid of being laughed at:
some of the old French names were very hard for Creole children
to pronounce, so long as the little ones were indulged in the
habit of talking the patois; and after a certain age their
mispronunciations would be made fun of in order to accustom them
to abandon the idiom of the slave-nurses, and to speak only
French. Perhaps, again, she was really unable to recall the
name: certain memories might have been blurred in the delicate
brain by the shock of that terrible night. She said her mother's
|
