A gift for My Mother The story is written by Viv McDade. She was born in Ireland, grew up in Zimbabwe and lived in South Africa for most of her life. While living in South Africa, she was a part of some organizations. She now lives in Ireland. In the short story the narrator is a girl called Lucy. The story is told by a first person narrator and from her viewpoint. When a story is told by a first person, you need to realize that what the narrator is recounting might not be the objective truth.
A first person narrator often tries to justify her actions, because she wants to put herself in a positive light to the readers. We know that Lucy is the Narrator but she is also the main character in the story which you should have in mind while reading the essay. Lucy is a girl at the age of ten. She wants to her parents to feel good about each other. She obeys her mother without protesting. She hears her mother’s “dreamy voice”; when she gives her mother some flowers. She wants her to be happy. She is a girl who cares very much for her family.
She is only 10 years old and could easily be called a caring girl. She is respectful to strangers, which we also see when she sells flowers to them. As it’s mentioned in the text, she lives in a poor family. Her relation with her father is very good, she feels that her father always helps her when she is nervous or when she feels unintelligent, especially in her homework. Her father doesn’t earn too much by working at a garage and it can theoretically be because he is too lazy. It says in the text that Lucy had longed to give her mother something very precious and beautiful.
For that reason she wants to surprise her by selling some flowers and giving her the earned money. She doesn’t think about the consequences. In my opinion the reason why she doesn’t do that could be her love for her family. The mother is very possessive as she always thinks about the future and what they can live on. The money her husband comes with isn’t enough for them to live on. As it says in the text the story takes place in South Africa. We don’t get to know when the story takes place, but it looks like it could be after apartheid because Lucy goes to school.
We know that some of the people in the area are rich. On the other side of the railway line there is a rich neighborhood and we don’t get anything else mentioned besides the fact that her mother always had dreamed of living there. Lucy decides to pick some pretty wild flowers and to sell them in the rich neighborhood. Lucy is glad because she thinks her mother will be pleased with the money she has earned. However her mother is very angry and forces Lucy to return the money she has earned.
She has her pride, she will not live on charity, and she will not have her neighbors think she sends her 10 year old daughter out to earn money. The themes in the short story “A gift for my mother” could very well be the family relationships and the consequences of being in a poor family. In the start of the text we get to know that it is a family with a lot of tension especially when the mother mentions “money” and the father suddenly gets angry. Another thing we see her is the relation between the parents which isn’t very good. One other theme could be pride in the family.
They are indeed poor and the mother could easily spend the extra money, but she will at all costs not desire it to be thought that she has sent her daughter off to beg. One woman refuses to accept the money and suggests a talk with the ?? mother. When Lucy tells her that, she puts the money in her purse but will not have any talk. She highlights her message clearly; they will not have any alms. We can obviously see that it is a family of honor, even that they are very poor. They don’t have much money to live on but still they don’t take the money which they could very well use.
