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Analysis Of Monkey Beach By Eden Robinson

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“Monkey Beach”, written by Eden Robinson, is a Northern Gothic novel that is becoming recognized as part of the cannon in Canadian literature. The story has two timelines, the past and the present, told through the thoughts of Lisamarie Hill, or better known as Lisa. Lisa is a Haisla woman living with her family in the town of Kitamaat; she is headstrong, resilient, and occasionally reckless. The book starts when her brother, Jimmy, went missing at sea and she started to remember her childhood and how she came to be the way she is now. Lisa’s wild personality was developed when Jimmy became the golden child of the family and she became the troublemaker of the family. Throughout the book, it can be seen that Lisa has an inferiority complex towards her brother and it can even be said that she …show more content…

There are certain events that seems to lead to this resentment and her actions afterwards just further supports the idea. The inferiority complex starts when Lisa starts to learn swimming at school but can never put her heads underwater long enough so she was determined to learn swimming in four weeks. Jimmy copied her moves effortlessly( Robinson, 47) and instead of being smug about it, he give her those soft, pitying looks( 48). This event is enough for her to stop wanting Jimmy to stick with her and she began to seek out others company, like Erica and Tabs. Her feelings got even worst when Jimmy mock saying that he would know how to ride a bike before her ( 49). With her pride wounded, Lisa starts to recklessly riding her bike even when she is bleeding. The two events made Lisa even less want to be with Jimmy, to the point that she would even let Erica cheating just so she does not have to play with him (64). Jimmy began to

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