A Gift for My Mother
Have you ever tried to show your love to somebody, but they do not reciprocate your feelings? This is what happens for the main character and narrator, Lucy in the short story “A Gift for My Mother”. The short story is written by Viv McDade in 2011. It is about a family, which comprise Lucy and her parents. The family lives in South Africa and they have to struggle to scratch a bare living. One day Lucy’s parents are arguing about money, Lucy conceives the idea of earning some money to give to her mother through collecting wild flowers to sell in the neighborhood. When Lucy had sold all the flowers, she wanted to give the money to her mother, but her mother refused the money and Lucy now has to return the money.
The narrator in this short story is the main character Lucy. The story is told by a first person narrator and from Lucy’s point of view, which we get a hint of on page eight in the first line; “In the year I turned ten I picked my mother a bunch of wild flowers in the bushveld (…)”. When we are dealing with a first person narrator and particular when it is a child’s point of view, we have to have the narrator’s reliability in mind, because sometimes the first person narrator is not full objective.
The story is set in South Africa, perhaps Zimbabwa where author Viv McDade is born. We get some clues about the setting. We are told about some plants and trees, which are only growing in South Africa example the “msasa” tree and the “weed” plant. Beyond that, the family’s situations is a big hint for where and when the story is set. On page eight it says “He [the father] took a deep breath and slapped the little brown envelope of wages down on the table” to this the mother gives a little laugh, and says “How much is there this week?” (p.8, l.31). It sounds like it is not the first time they are having this conversation about money, and it