Paper #1 Text #1

 This text is a memoir of Mary Seacole because she reflects on her life events that took place during the 1850s in Jamaica especially death. After seeing many people dying including her love-friend, she realized that death has nothing to be scared and ashamed since everyone could finally bear; eventually she came over the fear of death after those situations had passed. Meanwhile, the story has direct narration from Mary Seacole herself because she was in that particular situation. It shows by the uses of “I” before sharing her story and thought, which means she actually involved in the events.  She also uses many little events occurred during that time to show the affection of yellow fever leading to the suffering because of epidemic. Every event, including the story of her friend, she mentioned relate to the death, which is an anecdote from what she saw and received during that time.  The dialogue for example; “Let me lay my head upon your breast”, is used to pull the audience in the situation, which gives the audiences experience by themselves, and makes the story awakes. Since this is a memoir to review and reflect on her personal experiences, the audiences can be everyone because it is only the life-reflection of one person. Everyone who is interested in what people reflect can read the story. However, it possible that the audiences can be people who follow the life of Mary Seacole, or people who wanted to read the story of the witness, involving in the spreading of yellow fever in Jamaica during 1850s.

The tone of the text is sympathetic because she regretted about the death of her young friend and people who were suffering from the epidemic of yellow fever. The atmosphere is bleak, sad and gloomy because people are not happy. They were struggling to be alive even though the deaths were very close to them.

 Since the text is about the struggles and suffering of Jamaicans community, which she involved in the events, during the 1850s when the country was greatly affected by the yellow fever. It shows the life of Mary Seacole and her experiences with the disease and how she loses her love and others who has close relationship.  However, Mary Seacole doesn’t only want to share her experiences, she is trying to say that there is a loss of every life. Everyone is going to die eventually; therefore, there is no need to be ashamed to fear even though death is always terrible. For example; “if I had never feared death, I had not learnt to meet him with a brave, smiling face, and this he taught”, the sentence implies that she used to fear of death before she met one man who teaches her that death is what not to be scared. She realized that even a man who almost dead still thinks positive with smiling face, so death is what she can bear.

Within the story, Mary Seacole perspective is objective from what she saw and received during Jamaican yellow fever epidemic crisis. She received new ideological about the truth of death of people. She realized that everyone is eventually going to die, therefore; death is nothing to be scared, and is what people can bear at some point. It clearly sees that she actually received new idea from the use of “I” in the text because it shows that she was in that situation. The use of “he” and “my son”, which refers to her friend, shows the close relationship between two characters. This supports the idea that she reflects her experiences from important event in past that she sympathized, which considered as memoir as well. Therefore the text is pulling the audiences in due to the uses of pronouns in particular relation and her perspective that led the audiences think along with her ideological.

The structure the uses is organized within declarative style and informal language. She started with wide and general event that occurred in the area to give audiences the ground information of what she is going to talk about. The detail is narrowing down toward each paragraph to focus on her main point of the story. She develops her idea from giving her thought.  Since she meets the point where she explains everything, she describes her experiences, which provides the audiences’ easier view of what she is talking about, supporting her thought and statement. Her language used is mostly to hook the audiences to her experiences because for example; “I must not tell you his name…”, it attracts the audiences wanting to know who the person is. It makes the audiences curious resulting that she’s trying to pull the audiences in.