Lucy’s Dream and Identity in Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy

Abstract

Lucy’s Dream and Identity in Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy The dreams that Lucy dreams in Lucy are meaningful because they subtly represent Lucy’s subconscious struggles against the western metropolitan culture in the United States as well as against her own culture on the small island, Antigua, from which she came. As a whole, the recollection of her dreams is about the cruel and miserable history of her homeland in the present context in which she leads a metropolitan life. The dream that Lewis, her white employer in her city life, chases Lucy is the first one which revives the collective memory of slave girls. The second dream is about daffodils chasing her. The dream implies that the colonial education forced the colonized people to learn the First World ideology and culture. In the third dream, white people on horseback chase her in a field. This dream reminds us of the slave hunters in the African and Caribbean countries. Although all the dreams reveal the sad past of her homeland, Lucy mentions them to proclaim that the painful past will not bind her and her life any more. On the contrary, she assimilates the metropolitan culture and tradition with the island culture and, furthermore, integrates those into her selfhood. In doing so, after getting over the differences between the two heterogeneous worlds, she comes to gain a postcolonial identity. Especially as a decolonized woman, Lucy seeks freedom, justice, and sovereignty. Her decision to become a writer seems to be one of the ways to realize her real dream.