While reading Mayhew's profile on the watercress girl I became amazed with the amount of dialogue that he was able to pull from this young child. Writing my profile of Nancy Sand, a person I know, I found it hard to ask the right questions and get the responses I wanted. Mayhew somehow gets the little girl to say a long stream of statements that cover most everything you would want to know about her, while also pulling on the sympathy strings of the reader's heart.
I wonder whether Mayhew had more dialogue from the girl that he cut, or if some of this dialogue is recalled from memory, not taken directly from notes. It wasn't possible for him to record her, so there is very likely some discrepancy in the piece, and some exaggerations or untruths. Still, he does a wonderful job of keeping the child-like tone even if the girl is no longer child, and the accent is also very well done, whether he wrote this verbatim or had to improvise some of the speech.
I will say that I can now understand the comments on my profile asking for the driving question of my piece. I wonder why Mayhew wanted to write this profile of the girl, and if he tries to convey why it is lost on me. The profile is made up almost entirely of the watercress girl speaking, so I think the piece would have been made stronger by some of Mayhew's perspective, reflection, or more commentary. At the least, I need to know why Mayhew thinks we should care about this watercress girl.
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