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By The Light Of My Father's Smile Character Analysis

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In Alice Walker 's By the Light of My Father 's Smile, the father represses her daughter 's sexual desires and he has beaten her daughter, Magdalena, as she has sexual affair with her lover. As a result of beating, she is disconnected from sexual desires in the future which leads her to melancholia. In this novel, many characters speak throughout the novel which provides a holistic view of the main female character. However, one can notice that
Multiple narrative is tricky, making it difficult for the listener to pick up on exactly who is speaking at all times. While this collective telling yields fragmentation- no doubt it intensified by abridgment process- it also helps to deliver wonderful comic and tragic human moments. (Steinberg: 44)
Through multiple narrative, one can see the main female character from different characters ' eyes and then judge her better. The reader engages within the story …show more content…

Their impulses lead to fluidity of Magdalena 's subjectivity. As "both self and society are essentially linguistic structures" (Cavanagh: 293) the characters shape their identity through the use of llanguage and through communication with others.
The father beat his daughter as he misunderstood the message of the song that Magdalena murmurs and the nature of her love with Manuelito. However he was sorry for what he had done to her, he notices that his daughter "did not know of my sorrow, dying. Poor child. How could she know" (Walker:4). Magdalena was stubborn and did not open her heart to her father as she saw herself on the ruins of her life and she could not have the same love life with anyone else than Manuelito. However, the father comes to the conscious that his mistreatment and preconceptions destroyed Magdalena 's life and he is sorrowful.
In fact, the father misunderstood the song as he was always suspicious about Magdalena and considered her as a

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