In the book Open City by Teju Cole, the narrator discussed his train of thoughts on New York City that many New Yorkers can relate to. The narrator struggled to fit into the city as he is part German and part Nigerian. He is an immigrant who is doing his residency at a hospital and so has yet to be fully connected with the city. There is much subtle symbolism in the story that reveals his disconnection with the city. For instance, he mentions the birds in the sky that come to formation as they prepare for their natural migration. (Cole, p. 2) Eventually, he does not notice them and sometimes forgets that they are there. In some ways, the narrator is like the birds in the sky in that he is also an immigrant who moved to a new place.

I find it relatable that he disconnects from many things in the city such as the birds, classical music, and the people around him in order to adjust to the city. When I first came to New York, I filtered the subways sounds that I was not used to at first in order to focus and go to sleep. I would also look up at the airplanes in the sky a lot since I just got to the city on a long airplane flight from China. In order to stop thinking and reminiscing about the past, however, I focused on looking around more than looking up.

There were so many people in the city but ironically there was still a disconnection with everything. Eventually, it was through the connections that came from with friends in the city that made the narrator and many people to view New York City as a home to all, or an “Open City.”

I find myself relating to the first chapter of Open City more than any other reading throughout this semester. Not only in the aspect that the protagonist is currently pursuing psychiatry, but also his obsession with the little things he observes around the city. His walks, littered with minute but meaningful observations about the environment and people around him resonate with me, as I grew to appreciate the smaller aspects of what makes up the atmosphere around us. For both of us, walking provides us clarity and a peaceful ambiance from the meticulous and mentally draining work we must complete every day. His habits and daily livelihood is something I wish to incorporate myself, even though I have trouble balancing reading with social media instead. The amount of similarities honestly shocked me, and I already seem to have a keen interest with the protagonist- even considering picking up some of the hobbies and expanding my relationships to broaden my perspectives on events that have taken place outside my lifetime. I resonate with his sense of wonder seen from not just New York City, but from the world:

“Often as I searched the sky, all I saw was rain or the faint contrail of an airplane bisecting the window, and I doubted in some part of myself, whether these birds, with their dark wings and throats, their pale bodies and tireless little hearts, really did exist.”

This line captures what I’ve been discussing- the small, microdetails that many seem to brush off from this world. Birds flying around the sky, airplanes leaving behind vast plumes of smoke, rain gingerly (or rapidly) hitting the pavement we walk on. To me, Open City captures this sense of wanderlust perfectly.

The author uses vivid imagery here to convey a dominant theme from the narrator’s (Julius’s) storytelling: being the silent, omnipresent observer prevents one from diving into the specifics of life. Throughout the reading, he presents a detailed account of his journey through New York City. He spares no aspect of his surroundings, however mundane they may seem in the grand scheme of things. He is constantly looking at the people around him and how they carry on with their lives. However, these lines reveal how his role as the “watcher” keeps him from forming connections that mean something. Despite his alertness, he missed something as important as the death of another human being right on the other side of his walls. The author includes the various situations where Julius has interacted with Seth, his neighbor who lost his wife to a heart attack, to drive forward the point that his constant surveillance had failed him where it mattered. This imagery also shows just how many times life presented him with the option to reach out to others and how he turned them down each time in his unconscious pursuit of solitude.

“I lost track of time before these images, fell deep into their world, as if all the time between them and me had somehow vanished… When I eventually walked down the stairs and out of the museum, it was with the feeling of someone who had returned to the earth from a great distance” (Cole, 36).

The narrative of Open City is quite unique in that there does not seem to be many significant characters or major plot-lines. Rather, we follow Julius through the first four chapters with his thoughts in his daily adventures and interactions in New York City. As such, Open City reads more like a journal than a novel, with the author even choosing not to include quotations marks around dialogue. This initially made the story feel mundane for me, as so much of what Julius chooses to tell us seems so pointless and arbitrary. However, as I continued into his story, I realized there is a simplistic beauty in his recounts of his daily activities merely for the sake of sharing his thoughts without any greater purpose. For example, when reading the passage about his trance-like state when viewing art at a museum (a place where Julius only chose to enter on a whim and did not drive the plot discernibly forward), we get to hear how the art made him feel—and even feel it for ourselves—in a manner that was only possible due to the novel’s peculiar format, a collection of Julius’s thoughts.

Hi Sharielly,

Being alienated from your grandparents sucks. I’ve had personal experience with it, and it is not good for any party. Speaking from experience, the parents probably had their reasons for not liking their mother/mother-in-law. Maybe she was abusive like my grandmother was to my mother. It is not mentioned, and the narrator may not know the full extent of the grandparent’s behavior.

-Zachary Rosman

“I wanted to find the line that connected me to my own part in these stories.(Cole 53)”

This line in Teju Cole’s work “Open City,” made me sympathize with the narrator. Being in a city that is quite alienating to you but is rich in culture and wealth makes you want to reach out and figure out where you fit in and contribute to your society. This feeling makes your perception of your experience feel phony, and you feel horrible about appropriating others’ experiences for describing your pain.

The words, “part in these stories,” suggests that even though many of the stories which built the city are ancient and forgotten, contemporary people are still present in the continuance of the stories by continuing to walk the ground and live their lives where these natives and Syrians lived long ago. The first person perspective is shown by the words “I,” “me,” and “my,” which show how the author portrays the narrator’s feelings of alienation as deeply personal, rather than distant and far away, like the reader would expect in an emotionless urban jungle like New York City.

-Zachary Rosman

Cole’s comparison of atrocity towards humans and animals is laid out starkly and abrasively. Cole switches between different stories/lines of thought a lot, so at first I thought this was just another random shift. But upon further reflection, throughout these four chapters there is a lot of reference to man confining man, such as Dr. Saito’s internment camp, Idi Amin, slavery, and colonization. Cole uses metaphor as Julius makes his way down into the train station like an animal in a pen, and includes animalistic confinement alongside the list of atrocities man commits to man. In this way, we can feel the dehumanization Cole conveys to the fullest and he evokes shame, sadness, and helplessness in the reader of people’s tendency to entrap bodies. Particularly, Cole’s attention to the “well-organized” characteristic of all these techniques of confinement aligns with the well-organized grid of the city and the overlapping subway lines.

I like your connection of this quote to Julius’s roots. At times, it feels like Julius is walking around the city without aim and without a root, and I wonder if this also stems from his family’s rejection of his Oma, which may symbolize a rejection of part of himself. It would explain the “sort of solidarity” between them. I like that Cole writes Julius to be introspective and aware of this, but also stuck as a result. Even though he is a psychiatrist, he is still helpless in some ways. I also think it’s relevant that you connected Oma and Julius as being open-minded, considering the “small-minded” way his mother described Oma as.

“The picture my mother had painted of her as a difficult and small- minded person was inaccurate; it was a picture that had nothing to do with my oma, and everything to do with my mother’s resentment of her. I was eleven when she came to visit, and I could see that both my parents were barely tolerating this strange old lady (my father sided with my mother). I also knew that part of what I was had come from her, and on this basis a sort of solidarity was established.”

This quote illustrates the strain that having a distant relationship with his mother due to his mother’s resentment has impacted the identity crisis that Julius has. His parents are closed off on helping him explore himself and the world outside of Nigeria while his grandmother is open to these exiting adventures. His mother may feel resentment towards oma because she left to Belgium after her husband died, which was a time that she felt they needed to be together to grieve. This is unreasonable on her Julius’s mother’s part because everyone grieves in different ways and she may have needed to get away from the place that reminded her so much of her husband.

This rift between his parents and oma meant that Julius would not see her so often. Julius felt that she was the connection to his culture because sometimes he felt out of place as an immigrant from Nigeria. He at times felt that he did not live up to the standards of being a Nigerian which made him think that he was disconnected to his roots. The openmindedness that Julius and his oma shared brought them together because the idea of seeing outside of Nigeria did not mean they were leaving their history behind, it meant that they were learning to be more culturally aware by traveling.

When Dr. Gupta brings up the horrific events of what happened in Uganda under the control of Idi Amin, which forced him and his family to flee Uganda, he states that the thought of Africans makes him spit. During the time he said this, Julius was the only one of African descent present. Later on, in the train station, two white children asked Julius if he was a gangster, and why he was not dressed as one. This situation reminds me of the incident of 9/11, during which the ISIS group crashed two planes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Many people began to look at ALL Muslims as terrorists (because the ISIS group identified as Muslims themselves). This just goes out to show that when someone of a specific decent, religion, ethnicity, or identification commits any wrongdoing that affects not just them but everyone who identifies as the same ethnicity, race, or even religion.

This short story highlights the differences between the social and racial classes during and after the Apartheid period. Grace, the seventy year old black housemaid, is constantly being interrupted by Fiona, a white Scottish woman, to have small talk. Although small talk is not usually a nuisance, to Grace it’s unfamiliar and inconvenient. Grace comes from a community of oppressed colored people who most likely didn’t have the pleasure to indulge in small talk because they lacked the time and the luxurious lifestyles that their white counterparts enjoyed. Fiona struggles with understanding the grave and distinct comparisons between them. She is oblivious to the daily hardships that colored folks are forced to experience in South Africa. Grace, who’s old and has a body that’s rocking with pain, is eager to end the conversation with Fiona, but can’t find an escape route. This relates to the relationships between whites and blacks during the apartheid period and after. White people lived lavishly compared to colored people and were saturated with white privilege in every aspect of their lives. Colored people were burdened with menial jobs and overwhelming responsibilities for their families. It was and still is a challenge for these two groups to connect and understand each other’s experiences and lifestyles. 

Throughout Disgrace, Wicomb utilizes perspective heavily to highlight the stark contrast in mentalities and livelihoods of the main characters, especially Fiona and Grace. Grace is oftentimes seen overanalyzing the most incredibly minute things- obsessing over the mannerisms of Fiona and using them to justify her stereotypes and entitlement over her. Yet, Fiona is simply asking Grace a question. She persists and goes on and on in these mental acrobatics over a simple question about her appearance. I believe this is all rooted in insecurity stemming from her mother, and highlights how people may live through their entire lives cursing the world for their misfortune. They were given a bad hand, and now must rebel against it with the only straightforward mindset they’ve known- insecurity. Rather than tackling problems and conflicts directly, it seems that certain people maneuver around these interactions and are constantly in a state of rationality- why is this other person above me, and how can I prove myself to them.

“Although she goes quite ugly with anger when Grace says, You English people from overseas… I’m Scottish, Miss McAllister snarls, actually baring her teeth. Now what kind of putting on is that, she said to Tracy-Anne, when everybody knows it’s the same place, same people.”

This quote stuck out to me a lot when I read the short story, as well as when I was working on my presentation with my groupmates. Something Fiona wants is to be distanced and seen as separate from the English, which is why she specifically identifies as Scottish. She doesn’t want to be seen as an oppressor, she wants to be seen as someone who is supporting people of colour, especially since she’s a part of the anti-apartheid movement. She constantly tries to connect with Grace, however she doesn’t do so in a way that is appealing to her. The two come from different worlds, and different experiences. Fiona is a wealthy white woman who is privileged in life, while Grace lives in poverty, faces segregation, discrimination, and racism. To Grace, all white people are the same. They are all oppressors, regardless of where they’re from. Fiona didn’t help improve her image when she also brought up a stereotype directed towards black folks when she asked how Grace was able to look so young and stay in shape, which Grace seemed to take with offense. While Fiona was attempting to connect with Grace, and meant to come from a good place, she was far from hitting the mark she intended to.

“Grace feels her head shaking, back
and forth, feels the shame rising from her scalp as if each hair
is being uprooted, one by one, leaving her bald as a baby. Itis,
dear God, just as her mother said: from airs and graces comes
disgrace.”

Throughout this story, I gound graces overanalysis of everything to be very odd. On the one hand, she’s probably right in many of her assumptions. On the other hand, that’s a lot of thinking for a mundane interaction. It seemed a lot like deep-rooted insecurity. That was solidified for me when the last line of the passage basically confirms that she’s embarrassed by her existence: Her skin, hair, way of speaking, way of doing things. And it all stems from her mother telling her she is a disgrace to the family. It makes me wonder why her mother was so embarrassed by her own child to the point of making a rhyme about it.

“She is still awake at midnight, amazed by the woman who has taken a silk scarf that does not belong to her, and wonders what to do. She rolls away from the child who shares the bed, and slides out to grope in the dark for the the thing she has taken, the exquisite thing she has taken for herself. Not stolen. She is not a thief.” (p35)

This is one of my favorite quotations in the short story, due to the juxtaposition in each sentence. She is awake in the middle of the night, due to her action out of character; Her name is Grace, she should be pleasant, delightful, holy. Instead, she has done something very different from her usual self: taken something tangible she loved from the visiting woman overseas. I find it interesting how she rejects the idea of her stealing the scarf, even though she admits to taking it in the sentence before. She fluctuates between guilt and appreciation for herself and her deserving the scarf. When she was a child, she would look in the mirror calling herself “Miss Grace” giving her confidence; It was in this moment her mother warned her that from “airs and graces comes disgrace”. Airs and graces in this phrase means having a superior or proud way of behaving. The white women in this story tend to show airs and graces to Grace, with their fancy facial products and small talk. After grace steals the scarf, a representation of these airs and graces, she feels thrilled, but falls to guilt and regret taking a toll on her mental state. She repeats her mothers words. In my view, Grace has never had an adequate view of herself. She sees the scarf as beautiful and graceful as she touches it, “in the glorious silence, hears the swish of silk”. The lavish items and lifestyles of the rich white women seem graceful to Grace. She wants to be called Miss Grace, with a title, to make her “lovely”. Her stealing the scarf was not the ungracious act. It is the superficial conversations, judgement of each other by the characters, and societal gap between the english and scottish women and Grace that is disgraceful.

There are small instances where Grace avoids being “ungracious”, such as her silence when Fiona wanted to join her for tea. This silence was not what was ungracious, however. It is her idea of superficial items and etiquette that is ungracious. This is not unique to Grace, however. Fiona’s artificial small talk is ungracious as it fuels the gap between social status.

-hannah khanshali

Zoë Wicomb employs various different uses of perspectives throughout “Disgrace.” The story focuses on three main characters with the narrator focusing on the perspectives of Grace and Fiona. However, Wicomb interestingly chose for the narrator to switch from third to first person narration a couple of times early in the story. After Fiona begins the story by asking Grace for her secret, the narrator explains Grace’s thoughts from the third person, “Grace stares at her blankly” before strangely changing to the first person, “But I don’t have secrets anymore.” The same sort of perspective change happens just a few paragraphs later. After Grace realizes that Fiona was asking about her secret to her youthful look, the narrator explains, “Grace knows it’s flattery” before switching, “No, you must just keep busy, that’s what I say, that’s what keeps you young.” Perhaps the narrator is not actually changing perspectives, rather just telling over the thoughts of the character without explicitly mentioning it as such. This would perhaps fit with Wicomb’s choice to not include quotes around dialogue sections, as the story begins, “So Grace, what’s your secret? asks Fiona.”

“Grace thinks of Fiona as that woman. She is from overseas where they have funny ways, like using first names when they don’t even know a person, although of course in Grace’s case she is only the char and so that is her name, which is a pity, for With such a holy name it would be lovely to add a decent title: Miss Grace. As a young girl she used to mouth to herself in the cracked mirror, Miss Grace, and toss her hair, and her mother said, airs and graces, just see it doesn’t all end in disgrace. Imagine, wanting to be called by your first name. Fiona, the woman said the first time, holding out her hand. No, I don’t want to be called Miss McAllister; it takes too long anyway. “

I found it interesting how the relationship and meaning of one’s name are viewed differently amongst these two women. Grace, who has been through hardships, considering the time this was written, sees value in a simple name. It holds a sense of worthiness and acknowledgment on the person. Whereas Fiona, a Scottish woman, sees it as a basic placeholder for the person itself–hits why she thinks Miss McAllister is just a waste of breath. From a psychological perspective, it makes sense for these two women to have different points of view. However, I couldn’t help but make a connection to the last reading of “Black Psychiatrist,” where Gloria, a white lady, actually held deep connections with her “new” name. I would have thought that because both share the same race, they would share the same stance/position regarding ones’ title. But I guess again it is all about one’s history. Gloria had a history she wanted to erase, so her name reflected that Grace had a history of being looked down upon. Hence, she wanted a name that held value, and Fiona had a history where she wanted to reflect simplicity in her name. I personally find names intriguing, so of course, this part of the text really spoke to me.

“Her (Grace’s) fingers catch on a pile of pink jersey – lovely stuff, soft as a baby – which in turn yanks to the surface the swirling blues and greens of a scrap of silk. Then the world grows miraculously still. As if mesmerized, she tugs at the fabric, watches it snake through the tangle of garments as she lifts it out of the bag. Grace rises, holds the scarf in both hands, runs it through her fingers, and in the glorious silence hears the swish of silk, the rush of water, of the tide foaming over shiny wet boulders. Her fingers work deftly; they fold the fabric into a small square and slip it into her pocket” (p. 7)

I found Grace to be a particularly fascinating character. I like how Wicomb leverages the actions and mannerisms of both Grace and Fiona to highlight what grace and authenticity are. Our titular character, Grace, is unaccustomed to modern-day courtesy and mannerisms. As such, she can see past the artificiality of common courtesy. The story begins with a short exchange between Fiona and Grace, during which Fiona asks Grace how she keeps her skin young and fair. Grace realizes that Fiona probably doesn’t actually care about her technique, but still reveals her secret. Logically speaking, asking someone a question without caring about the answer is strange and illogical. Small talk and euphemisms are tools used to avoid truth. Nonetheless, common courtesy seems to lean towards semi-truths and ambiguity. At the story’s start, Grace is effectively the embodiment of authenticity and graciousness, while Fiona acts as a foil, behaving superficially and speaking carelessly during her stay in South Africa. Over the course of the story, however, Wicomb demonstrates Grace’s gradual descent into disgrace. 

Grace’s descent into disgrace is observed as she analyzes and thinks about her interactions with Fiona and Miss Haskins. In one instance, she recalled how Fiona would become offended when being mistaken as English instead of Scottish. Grace doesn’t understand why Fiona got upset, thinking that all white people came from the same place anyway. In this instance, Grace begins to exhibit ungraciousness. Rather than seeking truth and politeness, she chooses ignorance and convenience. Grace also describes a time in her youth when she would toss her hair in front of a mirror and mouth “Miss Grace” to herself. She would imagine herself as graceful and elegant, but this scene paints graciousness as something vain and superficial. 

This directly ties into the quote above. Near the story’s end, Grace steals a beautiful silk scarf reminiscent of the sea from Fiona. This could be seen as her fall from grace. In choosing to steal the scarf, Grace’s authenticity is effectively replaced by materialism and superficiality. As a concept, grace can be thought of as elegance of the spirit. However, Grace gradually replaces the elegance of her spirit with elegance of physical appearance, leaving a void where her spiritual grace used to be. In this sense, Grace has become what she had repeated to herself in the mirror: Miss(ed) Grace.

“Grace thinks of Fiona as that woman. She is from overseas where they have funny ways, like using first names when they don’t even know a person, although of course in Grace’s case she is only the char and so that is her name…”

I found this quote interesting because it could have a broader application of the relationship and the interactions of the white people and colored people in South Africa at the time. The interaction between Grace and Fiona in this section seems to suggest that the colored people are viewed as inferior and backward, implied in Fiona’s question of how long Grace has to travel to fetch water, and highly amusing, implied in Fiona’s questions of Grace’s secret in keeping herself so youthful and suggestion of a visit for tea both of which do not seem to be serious or genuine. This, at least, is Grace’s interpretation of their interaction and it’s easy for the reader to also view the interaction in this way. However, later in the passage where Fiona declines to write about South Africa because she has not lived there and sends the 100-rand note to Grace adds nuance to Fiona’s character suggesting that she might not be explicitly biased as it appeared but that are interactions were the influence of implicit bias.

” Sometimes whilst cooking, with the bottle of fish oil within reach, she would sommer rub a bit of oil into her hands and face to relieve the tightness. But she says nothing of the cooking oil. ” ( Wicomb, p. 25)

When reading through this section, I could sympathize with Grace and understand why she would not mention how she used cooking oil to moisturize her skin. When compared to Fiona who uses expensive skincare products in fancy packaging, Grace looks less than dignified. Throughout the story, there were many instances when she did not reveal how she was poor or her segregation experience. This could signify how she sees her poverty and her segregation experience as a source of shame since it is something she did not want to talk about. I think what Grace found to be her true source of shame in the end was the assumptions she made about Fiona and stealing her silk scarf.

“I’d like to visit a coloured township. I could perhaps come and see you at home some time, Grace? For tea? she adds, as if that would make it better. Grace doesn’t know what to say. She knows that now her silence is ungracious, but what can she do? Imagine, inviting yourself to tea. No, such a palaver would wear her out, and already she feels a wave of weariness lapping at her feet. What a business that would be on her day off, and with her china set all chipped now, no longer at its best. That woman will just have to do without, and she, Grace will hope for the best, hope that it’s idle talk.”

This passage is similar to a few different passages spread out through the text because of the slightly comedic effect it has. The author uses dramatic irony here to depict how two characters react to each other while assuming the thoughts of the other. Grace is annoyed by the idea of having to cater to Fiona on her day off of work. Although it is just a visit for tea, Grace is convinced that she will have to make special preparations (like bringing out her china) to accommodate Fiona’s visit. On the other hand, as the reader discovers later in the reading, Fiona is anti-apartheid and is genuinely interested in the way of life in South Africa, especially the life lived by black South Africans. So, while Grace is uneasy with a friend of her employer coming over to her house because she will have to put up a facade to be more presentable, Fiona believes her request is a show of good faith and friendliness. This juxtaposition is one of many (like when Fiona asks about Grace’s skincare routine and when she declines Grace’s offer to iron her clothes) that brings some humor to a text that has more serious undertones throughout.

“Imagine inviting yourself to tea…it would be lovely to add a decent title: Miss Grace…
Fiona, the woman said…No I don’t want to be called Miss McAllister…she even tried to kiss Grace, that puff-puff kind of kissing that the white people do.” (26)

I found the juxtaposition between the women with their way of conversating and conventions within the story to be very intriguing. For instance, on one hand, Grace believes that to address people you should put either a Miss in front of the name or call them by their last name to be formal. On the other hand, Fiona insists on using first names. Additionally, there is the way that Fiona thinks it is alright to invite herself over to one’s house for tea or is fine with more intimate-like actions which Grace sees as intruding. The author notably portrays this difference in their ideologies and etiquette in two separate, but intriguing ways. With Grace the author conveys her thoughts while Fiona’s are what she says and her actions. I thought this way of comparing these two women were really interesting yet subtle.

“Grace felt for her, so she didn’t say about the police on that Boxing Day, oh years ago when Ed was still alive, beating them off the beach with wooden batons. How were they to have known that the beach had in the meantime been declared white? As for penguins, she didn’t think there were any; they must have come for the white people who were so pleased to swim with them. Oh I used to swim like a fish in my time, Grace boasted instead.” -Page 32

These lines from the passage confused me. Before these lines were mentioned in the text, Shirley talked about how she planned to take Fiona on a wine route, a picnic at Silvermine, and a beach called Boulder before she left. When Shirley discovered that she and Fiona wouldn’t be doing any of these things because Fiona decided to spend more time at Grahamstown, in disappointment, Shirley asks Grace if she’s done any of these things. This leads to Grace lying to her about her previous experience at Boulder beach when it was segregated. She also purposely avoids confronting Shirley about the misconception that penguins are present at the beach. If Grace “felt for her” why would she lie and not tell Sheirly the truth about the beach. This could have reduced the disappointment Shirley had about not being able to visit the beach with Fiona since the beach has a negative (and fabricated) history behind it. The only reason why I think Grace might have lied could have been to make Shirley feel bad on purpose. This relates to the fact that Grace has experienced the beach in a way Shirley never will. While Shirley is so disappointed in the fact that she didn’t get to do these unimportant superficial things with Fiona, she is ignorant to acknowledge what someone like Grace may have gone through while the apartheid was going on and these activities may have been restricted to her, leading to Grace possibly saying this out of spite.

At the beginning of this chapter, Grace, a housekeeper, and one of the main characters in the text seems to believe she is nothing like Fiona McAllister and her Misses, Shirley Haskins, who are white women. Grace mentions in the text, “And why did she give in to the woman’s nosiness and speak about such foolish things? It’s like being unfaithful to her own name, making herself ungracious, when Grace is a name from no less than the holy book itself.” Basically saying, with such a name like hers, she must not stoop down to  Fiona’s level, she mustn’t be nosy. Grace’s name is the centerpiece of this chapter. She believes that she must keep her holiness, but she ruins that when she steals Fiona’s scarf at the end of her chapter. She begins to feel the guilt afterward and feels the need to confess her sins. “From airs and graces comes disgrace,” she is now a disgrace for stealing the scarf without hesitation. This goes to show that even the most “perfect” people are not perfect.

One thing that fascinated me about this particular reading is its use of literary techniques. Throughout the text, Wicomb incorporates various similes and uses vivid imagery not only to describe important things in the story, but to pinpoint the reader’s attention on them. For example, at the beginning of the story, Wicomb states, “Silk, she supposes, and in shimmering blues and greens that flow into each other, exactly the colour of the sea on Boxing Day…” (24). At this point, I wondered why the author would provide such a meticulous description of a scarf and thought to myself that maybe it would play an important role later on in the story. To my surprise, I was right. After Grace assumes that she knows Fiona’s true intention in not letting her iron her clothes, so she wouldn’t have to leave a tip, she decides to steal that same scarf that came up early in the story. Additionally, I really liked that Wicomb decided to conclude the story with, “Grace feels her head shaking, back and forth, feels the shame rising from her scalp as if each hair is being uprooted, one by one, leaving her bald as a baby” (36). Here, he brings back a point made earlier about Grace’s naturally good hair and portrays the shame as “uprooting” it from her scalp. Ultimately to show how “disgraced” Grace was after seeing that Fiona left a tip and recognizing how wrong she was about her.