Black Shack Alley Essay

How often do we spend quality time with our family? Black Shack Alley by Joseph Zobel is a compelling novel that reveals the common day of five-year-old, Jose, ending and starting his day with his grandmother, M’man Tine, in Martinique. The story effectively weaves together, like M’man Tine’s dress, the everyday ritual, culture, and social class of plantation life to show representation and pride. Although there is minuscule excerpt available from the entire work; however, the writing style and flow of the story is so alive, it is easy to grasp the quality and depth of the work.

Furthermore, the everyday ritual includes Jose waiting alongside other kids his age for their parents to arrive from work. Then, being greeted with leftover food

The work requires abundant physical labor. Although these people are very hardworking, they are only capable of meeting basic needs. Their socio-economic standing takes physical representation in their clothes and their house. M’mam Tine’s clothes are gradually and consistently being eaten away by the cane leaves. Specifically, the dress she wears is mentioned to have gone through a metamorphosis from formal Sunday communion wear to an unfit and heavy ensemble for work. Jose describes the conditions to be to be, “swollen, hardened, cracked feet of this old black woman, to the hut we lived in…”. The author also chooses the words,”habitation”, “hut”, “shack” that have far different connotations from “house” or “home”. They lack the privilege we have today in having to use open fire, kerosene lamps, and water for brushing teeth. Nonetheless, Jose is capable of finding beauty in his

The first sentence in part one starts, “Whenever the day had been without incident or misfortune, the evening arrived with a smile of tenderness”. The personification of the evening is used to create the initial atmosphere of at feeling ease. A personal favorite that stood out to me was the simile, “When I finally said ‘Goodnight, M’man’ and collapsed onto my bedding, I was like a drowned man coming back up to the surface”. It casts a very strong visual of him feeling drunk with sleep, and having the exhaustion overwhelming his whole state. Another simile describes M’mam Tine as, “... the daylight poured onto her back, which showed a withered skin through the holes in an old dress that had become as perforated as a net…”. The comparison is effective in showing a vivid scene and their economic standing.

The author, Joseph Zobel, had lived from April 26, 1915, to – June 18, 2006. In his lifetime, he moved from Martinique to Alès, France. He claims that Black Shack Alley, published in 1950, is a semi-autobiographical novel. It was later adapted into a movie in 1983. It got 17 national