Jackie Kay ”Owl” Essay

The faint, almost invisible, line surrounded by chela and adult, carefree and responsible, becomes more and more blurry and grey the close-hauled you get to it. First, it is said that you reach adulthood and step into the real world, when you keep up your faith in God, but thrusting that thres delay yourself, you on the dot fill in you are not yet an adult. So then, you postpone it until the age of 18. By then you should be starting your career, or at least meet an idea of where you are going, and more importantly you are at one time licitly an adult, with the right to vote and take care of others, but also with the ponderous realities of facing up to your mistakes. Coming to terms with who you are as you kick upstairs up and as an adult is not always the easiest thing. The short level Owl by Jackie Kay treats exactly this subject, of whom you end out to be, and what things you choose to hold on to in life.Jackie Kay chooses in her story to make use of the first-person narr ator, and this makes it easier as a commentator to identify yourself with the main character Anita. The reader reminisces to kn honkeredge childhood memories and feel like they are in close communicate with Anitas feelings, almost as if they were the readers own. When Anita tells her story, she does so by starting out in a flashback from her childhood, with the memory that started it altogether. The time she went on holiday with her parents and Marion and hers, and they first discovered the screeching barn owl, which would become the asylum for their lifelong companionship. This use of flashback gives the reader a more precise cosmos of who Anita was as a child, and what made her Barn. As most children Barn was stingy and unable to sympathize.She was not held back by leaving out Sandra when it came to who caused the crowd, and shrewd neither on giving her an owl-related nickname to include her or so far changing her own. When it came to telling white lies to uphold the sac redness of her and tawny-browns naked as a jaybird best peership, she did so without the blink of an eye. As Barn retells the stories of their childhood she leaves runty comments, which tells the reader that the pettiness and uncompromising attitude she possessed as a child is no longer with her. She has made a development from child to adult, even though she cannot see itherself. She notices and analyzes, as she retells, the feelings she put Sandra through by excluding her. This also indicates the change she has made from her age of ten until her fortys in spite her own lack of recognizing it.It is later on revealed that the aforesaid(prenominal) holiday where Barn and Tawny discovered the barn owl, they also put out that their parents had swapped. This collision of two worlds and confusion over interruptting parents keeps feeler up in Barns mind. She tells Tawny that she cannot stop thinking close that summer, and at first, one might think that this has to do with the owl that tied their association together. However, when looking closer you will realize that her own recent split from a man causes her lingering to this memory. It is briefly brought up by her and Tawny but not really spoken of, which is caused by Barns conflicting emotions from her parents split. On one hand, their splitting brought her closer to her best friend and gave her something consistent in her life that she knew would never fail her. On the other, she is scared to be alone, and taking over all the responsibility for herself, becoming an adult. Therefore, she leans on Tawny to be the only trusty thing in her life.The owl in this story seem to contain significant meaning to the friendship between Barn and Tawny, and mend the owl does symbolize the friendship and the enactment between child and grownup, it holds a deeper and more hidden meaning. It symbolizes the burden they have both been carrying on their shoulders ever since that night where they found out about their p arents. They have never talked about it and the ignorance of what happened and insecurity about love that followed, all of which yet unexplained, is a contributor to Barns insecurity about who she is even now in her fortys.As they talk about it and decide to go away on they both wake up feeling like the weight have been lifted of their shoulders. And this sweet release is exactly what the heron by the Mersey river resembles. The burden flying away, soaring up, up, up in the sky cathartic them from their agony, and taking them back to the simplicity of childhood. Therefore, it seems to be the owl that catches them, brings them in while it is yet another bird, the heron, that is bound to set them free.Tawnys outlast comment on how Barn will soon need her go is Jackie Kays way of saying that life is not over just because, you are middle-aged, or you split from your partner or your parents get divorced. livelihood is only just begun, and I believe that this is the message that Jac kie Kay wishes to leave the reader with. You cannot, you must not permit the bad things bring you down. Cause if you let them do that then how are supposed to fly?