"The Pain Tree" Story Review

1. Who is your favorite character from the story and what kind of background do they come from? Why? (Use examples from Michelle Cliff's essay, If I Could Write This in Fire, I Would Write This in Fire)

I liked Larissa sooo much. I really did. She was a black working class woman who always stood up against life adversities, and I value that so much.I think in this story you can see much of the class or race divisions Michelle Cliff talked about in his essay. In fact, Lorraine-Larissa relationship was pretty similar to Zoe-Michelle's. But in this case, I really hated Lorraine for never saying to Larissa what she really think not only of her, but of the social system in which they lived.

2. Why do you think Lorraine’s mother mocks the workers that want independence from England?

Because she definitely don't want to lose all his privileges she obtained because of her inherited social position and his lighter skin. If Jamaica gets the independence, his life would never be as easy as it was back then; she didn't even care of the colonial oppression, because she had converted into an oppressor too.

3. What is a “pain tree” and how does it play a role in the story?

A pain tree is a tree in which Jamaican people hammer nails into it, in a metaphor to transfer their pain into the tree, and release all the suffering.

In the story, Larissa attend to this pain tree and Lorraine found out. The pain tree showed the difference between classes, because not all people suffer the same way; the pain tree was for oppressed people, and had a story about abusses, and Lorraine knew it at the moment his pain didn't leave her by hammering a nail into the tree, and had to wait several years to finally understand why she was in pain in the first place.

4. What is the meaning of the line “people like me would always inherit the land, but they were the ones who already possessed the Earth”?

I think Lorraine said that because the natives possessed the earth. And the conquerors steal those lands and distribute them between those who had their favor: the jamaican oppressors. And even when she didn't knew at first, Lorraine was an oppressor too, and that I have to recognize to her: She does an excellent auto critic about it, about how the same jamaicans  became oppressors, some in a passive way (like her) and other in an active way (like his mom), about how some of his own people had to suffer for years, and about how the colonialism destroyed the peaceful life his ancestors and all the “people who possessed the earth” had.