Lucy is constantly in a struggle with her identity. In various occasions she references being uncomfortable in her own skin throughout the book. I think this is why she resonated with Paul’s statement so much. There’s beauty in knowing that you can run away to where nobody knows you and you can actually start all over. It makes you incredibly hopeful and optimistic that you can escape from this intertwined deep deep sense of violation, so that you can somehow transform this colonized body into an independent one free of trauma. I think the thought of escaping also helps harness an individual’s sense of control. When everything around us is so unpredictable, who else can we control but ourselves? It’s purely psychological.

“The object of my life was to put as much distance between myself and the events mentioned in her letter as I could manage. For I felt that……..and if I could put enough events between me and the events mentioned in the letter, would I not be free to take everything just as it came and not see hundreds of years in every gesture, every word spoken, every face?” (Kincaid 31). I think this all ties back to her being a colonized body and feeling like your life has never been your own right to the root of your very being.  You feel like your life has been made for you and your fate has been predetermined. This leads Lucy to run in search for herself and who she is without her ingenuous name and her homeland. There’s a lack of privacy within yourself because everywhere you turn you see and reap the consequences of that very colonization. I also think that there indeed is beauty in escaping, especially when one has had such a hard life. Colonized bodies who suffer in their adolescent lives are constantly thinking about how they are the product of their trauma in some way or another. You think about how it affected you, your parents, your culture and how different your life would’ve been if it hadn’t invaded your very way of being. It’s an overwhelming bitter feeling and I think that it carries within you until you heal from it. “Minions. A word like that would haunt someone like me; the place where I come from was a dominion of somewhere else” (Kincaid 37). I believe that Lucy also takes that colonization and turned it into  a desire for control and independence over her own life. We  also see this with her personal relationships, she never necessarily reciprocates her affections for those close to her and especially keeps romantic relationships at a distance.

I understand Lucy’s bittersweet feelings of home (emphasis on the bitter), because on one hand home creates this strong nostalgia, it’s the place she’s most familiar with, the place that has taught her all of what she knows and there’s immense beauty in that, but on the other hand she remembers how home made her feel and how hard it was for her to constantly be surrounded in such an energy depleting environment. It’s sad for a person because home is supposed to be the place where you feel most inspired, authentic, and comfortable so when the one place designated for your utmost comfortability and relaxation becomes hostile and they no longer have that haven of peace, I can imagine how much inner instability that fosters. 

Lucy had various bouts of anger and strongly rejected those around her who loved her or cared for her. She rejected intimacy whether that was with Mariah or her various lovers, Lucy always prevented herself from becoming too emotionally invested or vulnerable. “ I had meant by telling them my dream that I had taken them in, because only people who were very important to me had ever shown up in my dreams. I did not know if they understood that” (Kincaid 25).   Instead, we see her show her love through physical acts, a method that is foreign to Mariah and Lewis, who are used to a culture of  affectionate transparency and are not uncomfortable with open and straightforward verbal displays of love. With Peggy, although Lucy’s closest companion in his book, truly knows nothing about Lucy and I believe that Lucy prefers it that way, she enjoys the superficiality of it all and seems self aware that her and Peggy have no solid foundation for a long healthy friendship but doesn’t mind that nonetheless. 

 Lucy is impacted by the failure of her original  role models, the people who were supposed to be her source of unconditional love and that disappointment has wreaked havoc over Lucy’s inner emotional psyche. It sent her on a quest to not only rebel against her repressive environment but also find herself and embark on a quest to reclaim her independence. She enjoys the impermanence of it all, the feeling of being ankle to get up and walk away from a situation on her own terms. Lucy spends this book running from her past which is also running from herself, because our past is the context of our lives.