The_Stone_Angel

Rayven White 1st Block December 12, 2012 Within a year, Currie Memorial Park was started beside the Wachakwa river. The scrub oak was uprooted and the couch grass mown, and nearly circular beds of petunias proclaimed my father’s immortality in mauve and pink frilled petals. Even now, I detest petunias. Margaret Laurence uses first person point of view through Hagar, the protagonist’s eyes. She starts buy giving background information to the reader, then progresses into the story. Hagar has flashbacks of her life and each memory has a significant purpose to the plot of the entire work. In the passage above Hagar is recalling back to when her father had passed away and that instead of leaving her his fortune being as she was the only last living blood tie and child for that matter he left most of it to be used for the family plot and to the community. Hagar has a strong sense of pride and arrogance about her that most people do not ever see. It is an unwelcome personality trait that she had inherited from her father. Even in her old age (80 years) she is still as stubborn as the day she was born, that certainly will not change. She has a child-like adult tantrum when she learns of what her father had decided to do with his small fortune. This is a prime example of the few, but noticeable character flaws she possesses. Laurence uses the passage to release the frustration and resentment Hagar feels towards her deceased father and the fact that he is gone and she can never tell him how she feels. At different points in the book Laurence uses various tonal shifts to emphasize sarcasm or a strong emotion the narrator is experiencing. When she tells of Hagar detesting petunias and the reasoning behind it the reader can feel the harshness of her words oozing from the pages. As the reader one has the advantage of figuratively feeling the personal story Hagar is telling of. When Martin and Doris, Hagar’s son and daughter-in-law “trick” her into thinking they are going for a drive through the countryside one afternoon the irony is as thick as molasses because the peaceful drive through the country turns into a visit to the Silverthreads nursing home. The driveway is bordered by nothing but petunia’s. The emotional language Laurence used to describe the nursing home is quite similar to the emotions that were in Hagar’s narration of the Currie Memorial Park. The tonal shifts and dramatic irony that sprouts throughout the novel gives the story a unique flair that makes it a well rounded read. Laurence shows that she has a multifaceted writing style and that her characters are each unique in their personal experiences and the language that they speak with.