Westbury Court By Edwidge Danticat Summary

Life has both good and bad memories. We often like to remember the good ones, but recalling the bad ones and analyzing it could be more helpful because it can help us realizes the mistakes we made in past, and also why do we feel more negative about it, the reason could be guilt, bad consequences extra. At a certain point of analyzing one could make self-discovery of the lesson the incident or memory wanted to teach you in your life. I read a great essay recently, it was about the authors' self discovery by recalling an incident which happened in her neighborhood when she was fourteen years old. The author was Edwidge Danticat and the essay was Westbury Court. The essay starts with an introduction and a great description

It can be said that Danticat wants her readers to pay special attention on those paragraphs, and read between the lines, and make implicit to find the hidden meaning of what the author is trying to convey. Danticat’s mother told Danticat and her siblings after the fire that, “See, this is what happens to children who play with matches. Sometimes it is too late to say, ‘I shouldn’t have.’ ” This was her response, and Danticat quotes her mother’s reaction after the fire as, “After the fire, my mother had us stay with a family on the second floor for few months, after school.” From this it can be said that Danticat wants her reader to find the relation between her mother’s response and reaction by explicating the unwritten. Another repetition of the same response was made in the conclusion of the essay when author grows up and recalls her past memories and asks her mother, “Do you remember the children and the fire at Westbury Court?” and, her mother gives the same reply as before, “Sometimes it’s too late to say, ‘I shouldn’t have.’ ” Which message that last repetition tried to convey? Was it the same message as of the one before? Why did author end her essay with, “I shouldn’t