Analyze the The Taste of Watermelon Essay

The story was written by Borden Deal, who died in 1985. He was an American novelist and writer of short stories. The story was set in the United States of America in a small village of the countryside. The main characters in the short story were, Freddy Grey and J. D. who are the narrators friends, Mr. Wills who is the father of the beautiful girl, and of course the beautiful girl – Willadean. The narrator has known his guy friends, Freddy Grey and J. D. for years since he moved to this place and started going to school. Willadean is this girl that the narrator is interested in, she is tall and slender.

Mr. Wills who is Willadean’s father who everybody was afraid of. He has bright, fierce eyes under heavy eyebrows. The story is about this boy (the narrator) who moved to this certain place and started going to school, was never interested into girls, but he did have an eye on this girl called Willadean. Last year she was nothing compared to who she is now. The narrator mentions how her walk started to turn him on, and how beautiful she really was. But he was afraid to get close to her, cause of her father Mr. Wills who would shake anybody’s soul inside them, with his yelling and always being angry.

He had been growing this specific watermelon for a really long time but the narrator decides to steal it at night, most probably to get closer to Willadean, to show that he is not afraid of Mr. Wills where as he really is. He brings his friends Freddy Gray and J. D. with him for support and to help him out, the boys tell him not to do this terrible thing, but unfortunately, he does it. In the end Mr. Wills gets sad after finding out that his watermelon has been kidnapped and bursts out into tears. The narrator does not get closer to Willadean unfortunately and doesn’t even try anymore.

The style of the story is written in 3rd person. It uses a lot of hyperbole sentences to make it sound and look more dramatic has really warm atmosphere which really gives the love atmosphere away, which explains a lot of details in certain paragraphs of the story ‘’. Maybe the narrator would be able to add some alliteration to make it seem more dramatic. And I would add some more details about the characters to get a much better idea of the characters and be able to picture the characters in your head, to make it seem much easier to you. I enjoyed reading this story.

I found it interesting because of the theme of the story, which is basically – love. Because this boy (the narrator) is in love with this girl Willadean and to get closer to her, he decides to steal her father’s watermelon which he had been growing for a really long time. As well as making him extremely mad for once to see the father’s reaction. In the end, the father burst into tears and was very sad for losing his ‘baby’ watermelon; he loved his watermelon so much that Willadean thought he loved the watermelon more than his own daughter. It just really interested me.