Tired of the entertainments (Metaphor)
The protagonist finds New Orleans an interesting and unusual place. However, she mentions that it presents “very little that can gratify the eye of taste.” There is “a French and English theater in the town,” but the family ignores them, for they are “too fresh from Europe” to care much for either or any other “of the town delights of this city.” Trying to escape from boredom, they decide to commence their voyage up the Mississippi. The river turns out to be one of the biggest entertainments.
Raising awareness (Metaphor)
Miss Wright was about “to seclude herself for life in the deepest forest of the western world.” She was going to devote “her fortune, her time, and her talents” to aid the cause of “suffering Africans.” Her first object was “to shew that nature had made no difference between blacks and whites, excepting in complexion.” The woman was going to prove this by “giving an education perfectly equal to a class of black and white children.” Miss Wright believed that the African cause “would stand on the firmer ground than it had yet done.”
New ideas (Metaphor)
The protagonist’s disapproval of the American government’s actions is not a secret. She doesn’t think that the agenda that the country tries to push so hard is a wise one. However, she doesn’t say that the country is doomed. On the contrary, the author states that everything can change for better in the near future. If people “once learn to cling to the graces,” America will be “one of the finest countries on the earth.”
Equality (Simile)
The author admits that she knows “so little of America” that she fails to understand it sometimes. However, every time she notices something negative, she is reminded of the fact that she is a stranger and – what is more – a woman, a person whom society believes has no right to judge. The protagonist contradicts such assumptions, stating that there are “points of national peculiarity” of which women may judge “as ably as men.” In other words, she has to fight patriotism and sexism every time she says something that the locals don’t like.
