The grass dancer

Extract

[...] The grass dancer During a lifetime, one will always encounter lies. These lies are road blocks along the journey called life, some being very harmful to one's life while others are hardly harmful at all. Susan Power's The Grass Dancer is filled with the type of lies which are life-altering. The three major lies within Power's story come from three different characters. These characters are Margaret, Lydia, and Mercury. While each of these characters embodies a different lie, they all have harmful effects on the lives of the people closest to them. [...]

[...] Harley believes that his mother never cared about him and because she never explains their family's past, Harley cannot figure out his self- identity. Much like Margaret's lie, Lydia's lie is one which destroys the hope of self-identity within the person she loves the most. The final life-altering lie which is found in The Grass Dancer surfaces in Chapter 10. Throughout the story, Charlene was under the impression that her grandmother, Mercury, had taken her in because Charlene's parents had passed away. Charlene had no idea that Mercury had forced Crystal to give up Charlene. [...]