CRICK CRACK MONKEY
BY
MERLE HODGE
THE AUTHOR AND HER TIMES

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üMerle Hodge was born in Curupe, Trinidad, in 1944. She studied in Trinidad until 1962 when she went to England. She got her bachelor's degree in French from the University of London in 1965, and went on to get a Master's degree focusing on French Guianese Negritude poet Leon Damas. 


üShe then taught secondary education for a while, and then was appointed as a lecturer at the University of the West Indies, where she also received her Ph.D. 

 
üHodge has published a number of freelance articles, mostly about Caribbean social issues, a nonfiction piece in 1981 about the new government in Grenada, and two novels. 

 
üFor the Life of Laetitia is her newest novel, published in 1993. She currently lectures at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, and continues to write. 

 üThe novel can be classified as a postcolonial text- it is written after the colonial period when countries were colonies of larger nations e.g Jamaica was a colony of England.

 üThe colonial period defined or set the standard for the colonies who were forced to do away with their own native customs (seeing that these residents were taken away from Africa during slavery) 

üThey are forced to adapt to a culture that Post- colonialists describe as “borrowing” 

 üThe idea is that Afro- Caribbean peoples have been using the culture of the “mother country” and neglecting their own as backward and undignified. 


THE CHILD NARRATOR


The child’s innocence allows for an unbiased often unadulterated account of events since the child would not have much experience like an adult to rationalize, and analyse situations and events.

 
The child is usually able to place himself in the midst of a conversation or in unnoticeable areas where the adults ignore him allowing him access to information and events an adult would perhaps not get/get.

 

The child’s inexperience allows for plain, simple facts unchanged by experience, age and time.

 

The child is able to insert humour into a serious event/ situation without compromising the integrity of that situation/event.

 

The child, as in the case of Tee, fills in background information by way of relating stories told to them and serves as a means of developing characters through their observations.