Discuss The Similarities And Differences Between ‘Billy Cart Hill’ And ‘Remembering Aunt Marie’, Focusing On Language, Narrative Structure And Content.
‘Unreliable Memoirs’ (by Clive James) and ‘Remembering Aunt Marie’ (by Grace Nichols) are both popular autobiographies written by well-known authors. We were asked to compare two random autobiographical extracts from the books and discuss the language, narrative structure and content of each. Billy Cart Hill, from the book ‘Unreliable Memoirs’ is one of many of Clive James’ memories of growing up in Australia and getting into trouble. Remembering Aunt Marie is more descriptive but is just as amusing. Remembering Aunt Marie is Grace Nichol’s memory of how she almost got into trouble by stealing her Aunt Marie’s rosary, but luckily escaped by playing on her Aunt’s Catholic faithfulness.
In Billy Cart Hill, there is a woman, Mrs Branthwaite, who has a perfect garden which James describes ‘like the cover of a seed catalogue,’ so when James makes a train of ‘Billy Carts’ and they destroy the poppies by crashing into them, Mrs Branthwaite has to be taken away, speechless, by two police officers and the children scatter in all directions. Alternatively, Nichols’s story is of her strongly religious Aunt Marie, who Nichols persecuted by stealing her rosary, to see the effect it had on her Aunt. Nichols narrowly escapes getting into trouble by throwing the rosary down at Marie’s feet as if God had put it there. Aunt Marie vows she will never come back to Nichols’s mother’s house – ‘I am not coming back to your house. I am not coming back. Let the Virgin Mary be my witness.’ But in the end she only stays away for a week. The basis of both stories is childhood innocence, - James didn’t know that the super-cart was going to crash into Mrs Branthwaite’s garden simply because he was a child. Nichols didn’t know what her Aunt’s reaction would be and was curious to find out. I think James’s story is much more graphic and gives a better description to the reader even though Nichols spent more time trying to describe the scene. I think this is because James uses exciting words like ‘disastrously’ and ‘skidded’ unlike Nichols’s description where she doesn’t use any outstanding words.
