LaVelle Reflection, We Travel the Spaceways

 Ruth Owusu

 Dr. Juniper Ellis

 Postcolonial Literature 

LaVelle Reflection, We Travel the Spaceways

    In the short story, We Travel the Spaceways, it is an oddly entertaining story. I understood it to be an inside look into Grimace's daily life and mind as a homeless man in New York City. Even in this futuristic tale, homelessness is still a struggle and people's treatment remains negative. However, with the arrival of Kim, she is unlike the other human beings. She is willing to sit, talk, and walk with Grimace and together be a part of each world. That fact, I would say was a big takeaway for me in how Kim was receptive and kind to Grimace, fully aware of his status in society. This was only possible because she was a spirit made flesh. There are many times when his soda bottles, labeled as his friends, would talk with him but also guide him as a means of protection, in rough times. As well as, his mind thinking about space and the Pathfinders. All these measures were a part of Grimace's connection with the Pathfinders, so his "friends" proved unnecessary because the real thing had been made flesh in the form of Kim. Unbeknownst to him, his inmost desire to connect to the ancestral world was made a reality. Kim serving as that figure and her interactions with Grimace communicate a greater message of how the Pathfinders care and desire a connection even with what society has deemed as useless, lowly, and poorest people in the world. 

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