Author Archives: psiloveu

The short story I read is called Full Stop, written by Alecia McKenzie. The short story is about correspondence between Carmen and her grandmother. They talk about Carmen’s real mother, grandmothers daughter, who didn’t raise Carmen and now wants to meet her.
The protagonists are Carmen and her grandmother, and antagonists are Carmen’s husband, which they talk about in their letters, Carmen’s brother and Carmen’s real mother.
In the short story you get to know Carmen and her grandmother personally and you can notice many things of them as persons.
Grandmother is a genuine Christian. In every letter she somehow brings up her faith in God. She appeals to God’s orders when she wants Carmen to do something, ”The Lord said, be fruitful and multiply”, ”Our saviour says to forgive and forget”. Grandmother seems to be a little bit silly what it comes to hands-on things. She relies way too much on her beliefs about Christianity. She doesn’t want to put burglar bars on her windows when there’s thieves moving around in her neighbourhood. She thinks God saves her from everything. Grandmother seems also a bit selfish and arrogant. She seems to think that the only right way to do things is her way. Also when Carmen says that she and her husband aren’t having babies yet Grandmother wants them to have them right away so she can see them before she is dead (which isn’t going to happen soon, according to the text). Grandmother thinks money is a way to measure how much your close-ones cares about you, for example when Carmen’s mom wrote to her but didn’t send ’a red cent’ and was upset about it. She thinks everyone else on the Island are thieves or unreliable, and doesn’t trust them or their work.
Carmen is nothing like her grandmother. She’s much more practical and smart. She doesn’t seem to so much of Christian. She’s used to her grandmothers behaviour because she deals with it calmly and doesn’t make a big deal of it. She still really cares of grandmother in spite of her personality. Maybe only because of duty.
The burglar bars may have a symbolic meaning in the story. Maybe grandmother thinks she’s isolated from Carmen and stuck in her own home if she puts them on her windows. And if she is stuck in her home she can’t control Carmen’s life and the development of Carmen’s and her mother’s relationship.
All in all the text takes a stance on Christianity and its extremity. Carmen’s grandmother is blinded by her faith in Christianity. She thinks God saves her from everything anytime ”God will protect me from evil”. As her faith on God grows, her faith in herself decreases ”Well I’m here still holding on, praying for a better way of living myself. We just have to keep hoping that our sweet Saviour helps us take each day one at a time”.