Analyse af Andrea Levys novelle 'Loose Change'

Why are people so afraid of the poor homeless human beings? Why not just give them a helping hand, when everyone can see that they are in need? Homeless people can sometimes be hard to spot in the open and in “loose change”, our narrator meets the homeless foreign Laylor. Here, Andrea Levy shows us how it's almost embarrassing to talk to a homeless.

Homelessness in London has been a big problem over many years. There is a big difference between the upper- and lower class, and many upper class-people has a negative meaning about the lower class. London is the place our story takes place in, and to be more specific mostly at a cafe/bar. The story starts in a media res, as we are already in a situation when the story begins. Our narrator meets the homeless woman in the restroom, where she borrows change for tampons. After this, our main character suggests to drink a cup of tea to pay her back.

Our narrator is a woman, probably in her 30-40’ties. She is a single mom, to her son and lives in a place with three bedrooms. in the beginning of the story, she tells us that shes not good at making new friends (l.1) “I AM NOT IN THE HABIT of making friends of strangers”. From that quote, we can tell that the woman isn’t that welcoming and probably doesn't let people close that easily. She tells us that she has got roof to live under, so therefore, we must assume that she is not poor. But with her being a singlemother, there might not be that much money to help other people (ll. 136) “But why me? I had my son to think of”. After our narrator finds out Laylor is homeless, we get a strong feeling that she is not very happy with the whole situation, and how it's almost embarrassing to talk to a homeless. suddenly, she starts noticing all the disgusting and dirty things about Laylor, and she sort of zone out of the conversation (ll. 111-113) “It was then i began to notice things i had not seen before: dirt under each of her chipped fingernails, the collar of her blouse crumpled and unironed, a tiny cut on her cheek, a fringe that looked to have been cut with blunt nail-clippers”. From that moment, our main character doesn't feel comfortable sitting at that table, which actually causes her to leave Laylor in the end.