Mount Pleasant

Mount Pleasant is a short story about a girl named Elizabeth and her little sister Lena, whose familyjust moved to the town Mount Pleasant. It was written by Marie-Louise Buxton and published in2005. The story is told through Elizabeth herself and it is therefore a 1st person point of view andthe language reminds very much of a child’s.“Mount Pleasant” starts in medias res, “Mammy’ll take to me with a wooden spoon if she catchesme up in the attic. But “Be off and play,” Daddy said, “out from under us feet.” We see no clearbeginning, no introduction of the story. Only the fact that “Mammy” will hit her kid with a woodenspoon if the kid plays in the attic. The narrative technique and the language are very special becauseit is told through a child’s eyes and there for we can also see the world through child’s eyes. Itbrings us back to the time where we saw ghosts under our bed and in the dark corners of the house.The first-person narrator makes the story also interesting because Mary-Louise Buxton has playedwith the childish language where she also made some own names for objects like “Granny’Omi’sDuckering Ball” and “Babby”. Those nicknames make the language in this story very childish andit fits very well. Elizabeth must be about 6-7 years, I can tell that because it says in the text: “Shementions the boy on the photo is about 9-10, not much older than her.” She let us follow herthrough her everyday life and she is just a normal child. She got some troubles by concentrating atone thing a time which makes the story a bit confusing to read. We see that for example when shetells us about her mother’s reaction when the father puts the picture of the unknown boy to the otherfamily pictures on the mantelpiece and then suddenly she is talking about her neighborhood and thatElizabeth and her sister are getting socks from some nuns. This changing subject thing she is doingthrough the story is also a childish behavior. The parents are two important characters in this text.The...