Analytical essay - Jesse

The short story ”Jesse” is written by the author Joy Boothe and it was published in 2012. The story takes place in Alabama, USA and we get to hear about the protagonist’s, which is the author itself, childhood. The story starts in 1957, where the narrator is five years old and it ends where she is 27 years old, so the story spans over 22 years. The story leads out a few years, because it jumps from one period to another period. But with that said, the story is still in chronological order and have no flashbacks. The type of narrator there is used in this story is the first-person narrator, which lets us see it from the protagonist point of view. The story is also written in present tense, which makes the story more appealing as well as lively and the excitement is therefore effortlessly build up. The main theme in this short story is race segregation. In this analytical essay, I’m going to focus on the setting, the theme and message of the short story.

“Jesse” starts with the protagonist telling she is five years. You don’t get to know her name. In the start, she says that she hates the name Jesse, because it reminds her of her uncle Jesse, which were an alcoholic and committed suicide. The protagonist and her family are Christians, and she participate in Sunday school. Her father works at the plywood mill, where he has a good friend called Jesse. Her father and Jesse get along really well, so good that Jesse come and visit them regularly. Jesse makes the protagonist and her mother laugh as well as making them happier, but he can’t come into their house, because he is a nigger. Then you hear about the protagonist’s first time touching a black man, i.e. Jesse. She is surprised that his hand feels like her father’s, warm and callused, because she was raised hearing horror stories from her Granny about, what black men do to little girls like her. The protagonist’s father gets a mental breakdown and that ends with him killing himself and the protagonist’s mother, which happens in front of her own eyes, when she is eleven years old. Then when the protagonist is 14 years old, she meets her father’s former good friend, Jesse, at her Uncle Alvin’s fish market and he starts telling her stories about her father, when he was alive. After that the protagonist never sees Jesse again. The story ends with the protagonist being pregnant and deciding if she give birth to a boy, she will name him Jesse, though her Granny despises that name.