Character Clues

Character Analysis

Clothing

Annie is a well-dressed little girl: her mother ensures it. Up until age twelve, Annie and her mother would wear matching dresses made of the same fabric. After Annie's mother tells her that she is becoming a young lady, she also refuses to allow Annie to dress in matching fashion.

This is a devastating blow for Annie. When Annie can no longer wear dresses cut from the same fabric as her mother's dresses (the metaphor just writes itself), Annie feels betrayed. Although her clothes from this point forward are always neat, clean and pressed as she mother demanded, Annie's relationship with her mother will never be the same. She's not allowed to be her mother's mini-me anymore.

Education

Only second to the relationship with her mother, education is a big deal in Annie's life. She's always at the top of her class and even gets promoted to higher "forms" or grades. Her father thinks that she falls ill because she pushes herself too hard in school.

He may actually have a point: Annie is criminally passionate about learning. When Annie goes through her phase of petty theft she steals library books.

The most interesting thing about Annie's experience in school is how it reveals what the British colonial education system is all about. She reads British textbooks and often has teachers who came over to England from Antigua. But our Annie can be feisty when she wants to be and isn't afraid to challenge her teachers… or anyone, for that matter.

Family Life

Family life is probably the most significant tool for characterization in Annie John. Annie's world revolves around her small family of three and her interactions with her mother and father. As her mother's only child (though her father has an unnamed number of other adult children), Annie is the center of attention for many years in her family's abode.

Although her process of becoming a young lady forces Annie to branch out of the home, she spends her earliest years comfortably residing in this sheltered world. Even when she's older and fed up with the constraints of her home life, she still cries over her room, house, family and the world she knows she must leave behind.