Analysis of Reading, Week 7
Analysis of Andrea Levy’s Loose Change
Andrea Levy makes great use of description in her short piece entitled ‘Loose Change’ and uses it as such to delay crucial information and create suspense in getting to know the character of Laylor’s backstory. As the reader and the narrator become invested in Laylor and her terrifying journey to London as a political asylum, we’re still enticed mostly by Levy’s descriptions: “dirt under each of her chipped fingernails, the collar of her blouse crumpled and unironed, a tiny cut on her cheek, a fringe that looked to have been cut with blunt nail-clippers” (73). The sudden notice Levy’s narrator takes in Laylor’s appearance snowballs towards the narrators sudden rise in emotions: “But why me? I had my son to think of.”
Just paragraphs later, Levy’s narrator has a change in heart, describing what it would be like to take Laylor and her brother into her home, where she had enough room to do so; “Only a savage would turn away when it was merely kindness that was needed.” It was how, in the first place the two had met at the National Portrait Gallery: the narrator had begun her period early and unprepared, asked a stranger for help. She goes on to say that Laylor’s grandchildren would know her name for taking her in a time of need. The shock of the narrator rising from the table to get Laylor a tissue and exiting the café altogether makes for an incredibly upsetting and surprising ending for the story.