Analysis of the Esch Character in Jesmyn Ward’s ‘Salvage the Bones’ (Coursework Sample)

Analysis of the Esch Character in Jesmyn Ward’s ‘Salvage the Bones’
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Analysis of the Esch Character in Jesmyn Ward’s ‘Salvage the Bones’
Introduction
Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones is the story of the Baptistes, an African American family living on the Mississippi bayou. The family consists of the father (Claude), the brothers (Randall, Skeetah, and Junior), and the only girl (Esch), who is 15 and the youngest after Junior. The story is set in the context of the Hurricane Katrina. It charts the events that accompany the coming of the hurricane and the struggle to survive its impact, both during and after, and the experiences of the people involved, of which the Baptistes are a representative (Moynihan, 2015). However, the story goes just an event and the experiences around it. Rather, by extension, the story is that of how nature and nurture - as factors that build personality – can influence individuals in broader ways. In this particular case, the experiences of individuals in relation to Hurricane Katrina are seen as symptoms of far-reaching dynamics that have been going on for a much longer time. These experiences vary from individual to the next, depending on, among others: biological factors (such as sex, age, and heredity); meso level systems (such as family and community); social structures (such as based on ethnicity and race); macro-level systems (such as laws and policies); and developmental/psychological elements. Katrina revealed many ugly things about the South and the country in general, which ranged from race, class, and lifestyle. In order to be clear, these influences may not just be across groups – such as in interracial relations – but also within a people. Gender biases, for example, cut across all ages, even if how these biases vary. Ward (2011) therefore, demonstrates how the narratives of individual trauma can be representative of – and influential in constructing a larger – collective narrative.