Lucy and Language

While reading the first section of Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy i began to notice two themes:the first that the main character, who i'm assuming to be named Lucy, is never actually called Lucy, and the second, she is never fully understood. What I'm sure of about the narrator is that she is a teenage girl brought from her home to a new world- new to her in every sense of the word. The weather and season of winter is new; the house she is in; the people she's living with; the room she sleeps in; some of the clothes she wears; the location; the country; the train she rides on; the children she watches. Everything in the world she is living in is new. She doesn't understand winter, or why Mariah is anxious for spring and going to her childhood home. The language used in describing these things to her are not words she knows or concepts she's learned about. 

Language takes another form in Lucy's life-the language she uses. It's different from how the family she is with speaks, and her ideas don't come across as clearly as she assumes they do. There is a language/cultural barrier present which has yet to be broken down. Lucy thinks by telling Lewis and Mariah about a dream she has they will understand it as her accepting them and having them as a big part of her life, but they don't see it that way. The maid doesn't like her for how she talks either. Language is used as one major barrier between her and this new world she's in, and inhibits her understanding of it.