Prince’s music unquestionably mesmerizes Melody: “And as I descended, the music grew softer, the lyrics inside my head becoming a whisper, I knew a girl named Nikki, I guess you could say she was a sex fiend.” Melody’s perception of the lyrics alludes to her sexual maturity which is evident on her sixteenth birthday. Melody equates herself to the girl whom Prince alludes to in his song. The citation of the song is a Musical allusion which shades light on Melody’s music partiality.
Melody’s grandmother stresses the import of a noteworthy legacy: “Of Course you’re gonna pledge one day…That’s just legacy, Melody…I pledged, your grandfather pledged-…Iris didn’t…That’s because your mama isn’t legacy.” Grandmother’s assertion concerning the materiality of a legacy confirms that she is not proud of Iris’s undertakings. She considers Iris disappointment because she did not live up to the canons of being an upright woman.
Melody and Iris’ mother- daughter connection is frail. Melody affirms, “If someone said choose between your mom and dad, I wouldn’t need to blink. Wouldn’t stutter. I’d run like a little kid and jump into my daddy’s arms.” Here, Melody furtively implies that she adulates her father more than her mother. Manifestly, her disagreements with Iris destroy their fondness for each other. Comparatively, Melody has affirmative reflections of her childhood days with her father.
Religious allusion accentuates the pain which Melody withstands due to her ‘illegitimacy.’ “Her (Iris) back was narrow and straight, her shoulders squared beneath the delicate satin of her robe. She was fourteen months away from her thirty-third birthday. The age Christ was when he died, hung up on a cross and left to slowly bleed. In school, we’d been asked to discuss his image- Literal or Metaphoric. Truth or Fiction. It was Whitman who said, Argue not concerning God. At the time we were in ninth grade- new to our beliefs and the power of our voices. So we argued. But now I knew there were so many ways to get hung from a cross- a mother’s love for you morphing into something incomprehensible.” Melody likens her experiences to Christ’s. She feels that her mother does not adulate her unqualifiedly considering that her birth backed to the adulteration of her mother’s legacy. Melody cannot discriminate her mother’s adoration for her; Iris considers Melody to be the killer of her dreams. Accordingly, Melody’s recognition of her mother’s inexplicable feelings towards her pains her emotionally to the degree that she feels that she has emotionally been hanged on the cross.
