LITERATURE: Jamestown – Concepts

There’s some good stuff here, where Sharpe endows Pocahontas with some intriguing ideas:

So there I was, spread languidly on the divan (…) minding my own business, and minding the business of the large looking glass on the wall opposite the diven, which is the business of the secrets of the world revealed by looking twice, once forward and once backward.  And to my hardened, dirt-caked feet, and to my skinny legs and scrape-scarred knees, and to the rough and colorless garment that covered my sylvan torso, and especially to my dented and inquiring face–whose eyelids drooped not so much in languor as in the lids’ attempt to shield the eyes from the full-on assault of seeing–I asked, "Who are you?" and "Who are you?" I asked back at me.  (Pocahontas, p. 61)

The duality of the mirror gives me some reinforcement in my view of Pocahontas as a multifaceted personality.  She is caught between the world of a child and that of a woman; she is trapped between acceptance of that world and rebellion against it.  She speaks her native tongue and chooses English in which to leave her legacy of words.  Naive and simple, yet wise in many ways, Pocahontas indeed seems a mirror image of herself.

Then there is this, as she asks Stickboy why he was with the men at the bus, and persists regardless of his evasive answers:

And this was his response:  the sound of the wind on the land, the same wind that blew the ash that clogged my ears.  A friend who won’t respond to what a friend can’t ask is like a looking glass in which you cannot see yourself.  (P. 71)

Nice.