This can help build a person’s identity that differs from their parents. Kincaid’s writing shows us that she believes that independence stems from the rejection of familial expectations to create a person’s way of thinking. The parting from an adoring family leaves Annie feeling ‘that someone was tearing me up into little pieces’. Bloom’s Literature writes about Kincaid’s message of familial rejection writing, “Kincaid indicates that the formation of the individual begins with a necessary severance of a child from mother, a post-birth trauma that replicates the cutting of the cord.

During this time, Annie realizes what she wants and realizes that a life that her mother leads is not what she wants. Because of this, she succumbs to an illness that leaves her bedridden for months. Throughout the book, Annie does everything she can to defy her mother’s expectations of her. In this period of hibernation, Annie reconstructs herself”. Verna Ena George writes, “Her propensity to behave totally counter to her mother’s expectations, her dreams of loss and revenge, of destroying or being destroyed by her mother, leads to a period of illness. Annie uses misbehavior as a way to push her mother away and gain her sense of identity. As her mother increasingly withdraws her approval, however, Annie asserts her own personality, though the lack she feels at her mother’s missing support remains painful, and she and her mother become more careful and guarded toward one another”.Īnnie’s relationship with her mother becomes more strained as the book progresses. To an extent, Annie at first wants to be able to misbehave, but she also wants to receive the maternal approval that she needs. Thomas Cassidy writes about Annie’s reaction to her mother’s rejection writing, “This realization leads Annie to “act up” more, and in ways that her mother frequently cannot abide. Annie forms an image for her mother as an evil figure to distance herself from the relationship, so she can become her own independent woman, who creates her own rules. Bloom’s Literature “Glossing Over Annie John’s Rebellion”, Annie, “deliberately shunning and depriving herself of a female model, fixating on her mother as treacherous, she molds herself into an exciting, desirable subject who obeys and disobeys at will”.

Annie learns a sense of independence through the rejection of her mother’s relationship. In Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John, Kincaid uses Annie’s rejection of her mother, her relationship with Gwen, the Antiguan culture, and heteronormative standards to illustrate that rejection can lead to learning, growth, and independence.

Annie john book