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Aa 5
Aa 5
In the story, a real estate agent named Pam Roberts offers a client, Martha Penk, two
properties before Martha decides not to buy either. Pam Roberts is a middle-aged and mid-
Western woman who usually enjoys a great sense of humor, but is fond of chatter and
sometimes expresses xenophobia. When she arrived in Massachusetts a week ago, Martha
had unrealistic concepts about the types of property she could afford. She seems to have
been part of the working class in England, but hopes to join the university and develop
cultural knowledge. She is constantly subjected to a rude and abrupt behavior, which has led
her to conclude that she is rather strange and somewhat non-civil. At the end of the story,
Martha's behavior seems to be the result of emotional turmoil. She seems to have left her
son and father to chase her academic dreams, and her anger seems to explain why she
abruptly refused to buy and leave the second property.
The story shows the author's knowledge of the concept of "cultural encounters", as she
employs the script as a whole for this concept, and can take a theme from the script in an ad
hoc format, as Martha and Pam, Martha is a Nigerian, while Bam is described since the
beginning of the story as "mid-Western by birth" Writing also employs words in this story,
such as "Arking", giving a glimpse that Martha is not entirely English. The abbreviations in a
non-foreign conversation are "I make mistake. Sorry, please ", and Martha's response to
"yeah" as yes is absent. Can also be seen using the third narrator as the organizer of the
novel, and how he focuses on Pam over Martha even that the story in her name!