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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Bambara’s writing style in “Raymond’s Run” is colloquial, meaning that it mimics how the narrator would speak. In this story, the narrator is Squeaky, a young Black girl living in Harlem in the early 1970s, and the style of the story captures how someone like Squeaky might have told a story about her life (with some literary license). Take the following passage, for example, in which Squeaky explains why she takes issue with her mom’s desire for Squeaky to pursue activities more traditionally feminine than running:
You’d think she’d be glad her daughter ain’t out there prancing around a May Pole getting the new clothes all dirty and sweaty and trying to act like a fairy or a flower or whatever you’re supposed to be when you should be trying to be yourself, whatever that is, which is, as far as I am concerned, a poor Black girl who really can’t afford to buy shoes and a new dress you only wear once a lifetime cause it won’t fit next year.
Bambara’s colloquial style comes across in her use of informal phrases like “ain’t” instead of “is not” and “cause” instead of “because.” This passage is also a single run-on sentence (which captures the way that children actually speak), and is notably full of clauses separated by commas, which gives the effect of a speaker becoming somewhat breathless by speaking for so long. It is notable that Squeaky’s refusal to be forced into the feminine norms of “trying to act like a fairy or a flower or whatever you’re supposed to be when you should be trying to be yourself” is mirrored in her refusal to speak in “proper” or feminine ways that aren’t true to who she is as a person.
Related Themes:
