The clash of two different worlds is evident through the
subtle struggle between the grandmother and her grandchild, the narrator. Almost from
their first conversation together, both seek to show the other how superior their world
is compared to the world that the other lives in. Da-duh has never left Barbados, which
at the time was still developing, and so the stories that her granddaughter shares with
her about America are truly overwhelming and strange:
For long moments afterwards Da-duh stared at me
as if I were a creature from Mars, an emissary from some world she did not know but
which intrigued her and whose power she both felt and
feared.
The narrator herself
says that she spent most of her time with Da-duh, telling her more and more about life
in America:
But as I answered, recreating my towering world
of steel and concrete and machines for her, building the city out of words, I would feel
her give way.
Through the new
world that is being described to her through her granddaughter, Da-duh is unable to cope
with or accept the radical change in life that is occurring, and thus her surrender
begins.
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