yl:english literature

‘The Day The World Almost Came To An End’

JTB’s deputy director of tourism, marketing, Sandra Scott (centre), shares in the celebration with the winners of the Experience Jamaica Summer Promotion. The
promotion required Jamaicans to log on to the Experience Jamaica page and correctly answer questions about places in Jamaica.The winners who received their prizes
at the Jamaica Tourist Board’s corporate offices were (L-R) Mavalyn Cole, second-place winner of a Chukka Caribbean prize trip; Tristessa Branche, the first-prize
winner of a vacation at RIU Hotels & Resorts; Deidre Spencer, fourth-place winner who received a prize from YS Falls; and Veneta Creary, who won a Dolphin Cove
prize trip.The promotion, which was only open to Jamaican residents, ran from July 26 - August 31.

BERYL CLARKE Her unwillingness to ‘get religion’ in her childhood is How does the writer make her story humorous? I would like
Contributor something that makes our story very realistic, for to a child death you identify the methods that are used. Let me start you off! The
VERY TIME I read Pearl Crayton’s story The Day The World

E
Almost Came To An End, I laugh. What about you? What do
you find amusing in it?
Our storyteller is also our major character. She is reflecting on
a childhood incident. She was 12 and still involved in childish
pastimes. When we meet her she is playing in the mud and she is
comfortable in her own company. She is, however, old enough to
recognise that she is a sinner and that there is a way to escape
punishment for her sins. Like many human beings she has
decided to continue enjoying her ‘sinful’ ways for as long as
possible. You see, it was her belief that when she is old, it would
be time enough to get religion. (Do you know anyone who thinks
this way?)
I wonder if you remember the sins of which she accuses
herself. We are told that she had ‘saved’ her neighbour’s ripe
plums and peaches from going to waste, ‘neglecting to get the
owner’s permission’; ‘the fights’ she ‘had with the sassy little
Catherine’; ‘the domino games’ she ‘had played for penny stakes’;
the lies she had told as well as ‘other not so holy acts’. These, she
believed, would earn her a place in the burning fires of hell.
It strikes me as strange that although the church or rather the
teachings of the denomination she attended, yes attended,
perhaps, very regularly, for she was a church-going sinner,
warned her, she did not stop doing what she considered to be
wrong. She finds her sins too sweet, ‘delicious’ she call them, to
give up. It is obvious, though, that she knows right from wrong.
would have seemed far away, and associated with old age. After
all, many 12-year-olds are not particularly interested in their
salvation. Realism is maintained through several other means.
The incident is set in 1936, reference is made to a real person,
Ralph Waldo Emerson – American lecturer and essayist and poet,
Rena warns her of the impending end of the world on a Friday,
there is talk of an eclipse although the information is garbled, and
a real airplane does fly over the area.
As is customary in a story of this length, there are few
characters and of these only two are developed. These, as you are
aware, are our narrator and her father. Pearl Crayton has created
two likable characters in them. Our child storyteller is honest in
talking about herself and her actions and her attitudes to others.
We are able to learn that she loves her father dearly and seems to
have a closer relationship with him than with her mother. Daddy
plays the crucial role of being her support. She trusts his
knowledge and outlook. He listens to her concerns, explains
matters that she does not understand, such as the sections of the
book of Revelation that she has read; he is the breadwinner of the
family and an officer in their church. This suggests that he was an
exemplary member of the community. Her skeptical position is
clearly the result of her preferring to accept what her father says
above what others say.
I began this week by asking if you too find humour in this story
and I think that would have alerted you to the fact that it is one
aspect of the work on which you should reflect.
very first sentence is not only humorous, due to its surprising
information, but it arouses the interest of the readers. The
following sentence is also funny, made so through exaggeration,
a technique that is employed again as the story develops. Did you
laugh out loud when you read the explanation that was given for
an eclipse? Some readers did. I can easily visualise the little girl
in her long nightgown running and hollering loudly that the world
was coming to an end. What a spectacle! Part of this humour is
because the storyteller makes fun of herself – but wait a moment,
what I am doing? You spot the rest.
I cannot close without pointing out how the writer creates
tension in our narrator. She does not get the news until Friday
afternoon that the world would end on Sunday; soon after Miss
Daya, who is passing, tells them that the Lord is coming soon,
(the time must have seemed very short in which to ‘get religion’)
her father on whom she depends for reassurance takes longer to
come than he usually does, then he tells her that the world could
end that night and, to top it off, it was a moonless night on which
this was to occur!
Delicious sins! She has her reasons for so naming them. What
do you think? Try to read Emerson’s story on ‘Compensation’.
Walk good and God bless!
Beryl Clarke is an independent contributor. Send questions and comments to
kerry-ann.hepburn@gleanerjm.com

18 YOUTHLINK MAGAZINE | NOVEMBER 15-21, 2011