Sunday 5 September 2010

Mrs.Vincent - Evelyn

  • Mrs Vincent is a very strange character and it is difficult to get a concept of her real personality. At one moment she is horrible to Jim - failing to care for him when he gets pneumonia - and she is a silent woman who stares at the walls, her plate, Jim's shoes...and yet she still helps Jim with his Latin homework, teaching him with cockiness 'the distinction between gerunds and gerundives.' This surprises the reader, maybe it is showing she has mood swings? If this is the case, it probably implies she is still relatively young.

  • Mrs Vincent does not like Jim. This could be because he is a reminder of what she used to be like when she was young, fit and active. For instance when Jim offers his bed to her to sleep on, and he tries to reach her shoulder, 'her distracted eyes could come to a remarkably sharp focus'. I think the way Jim assumes she wants to rest aggravates her - she is not old and frail, she still feels young inside. Furthermore, the way she does not want him to touch her could imply that she is/was used to other men doing that to her pre-war when she was obviously handsome and she does not like the way a 14 year old boy is trying the same technique.

  • Mrs Vincent is a very quiet and subdued lady. Whenever she speaks, somehow Ballard implies she slowly and carefully picks each word before saying it aloud: '"You're late, Jim,"' she uses very short simple sentences to get her message across quickly and successfully.

  • Mrs Vincent misses her pre-war life. She stares at the whitewashed wall consistently and Jim refers to it as her 'watching invisible films'. At one point, Jim tries to guess what she is watching - 'herself back in England before she was married, sitting on one of those sunlit lawns'. The word 'sunlit' automatically gives the scene a dreamy and perfect illusion so the reader assumes this means she is missing her previous world and life before the war, before her marriage.

  • Mrs Vincent understands and excepts the fact that the war will not and cannot go on forever, so she silently waits each day for the war to get ever closer to it's end and on the way just makes sure she lives each day. Just over half way through the novel, Mr Vincent confronts Jim and tries to stop him from replacing the turtle under his bunk and Mrs Vincent just 'watched without expression as her husband sat on his bed, staring in his desperate way'. Mr Vincent would evidently likes some reassurance ('desperate') but the fact Mrs Vincent does not provide him with any shows she really could not care less for a turtle being trapped in a box day after day. Since she does not show any sympathy towards the turtle, it implies the war bores her and she cannot be bothered to waste her efforts in a camp she expects to be rid of soon enough. It is as though she knows this is just one chapter in her life, and she does not feel the need to try at anything while she is there because she knows her life will have plenty more interesting enough events to come, even if one of those events is her own death.

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