Do You Like My Red Sweater?
http://www.stjohns-chs.org/english/nwixon_courses/english-9-111/eleven-by-sandra-cisneros.pdf
The main character, Rachel, describes an incident on her eleventh birthday that made a strong impression on her. Think about what happens to Rachel and how she feels about the incident. How does it affect the way she feels about herself? Write an essay in which you explain how you think Rachel views herself on her eleventh birthday. Consider why she sees herself as she does, what affects her view, and if her feelings about herself change as a result of her experience. How does the author show us Rachel’s feelings and how do we know if those feelings change? Be sure to use specific details from the text to show why you think the way you do--including one simile or metaphor taken directly from the text and one original simile or metaphor of your own to describe Rachel’s experiences.
And, how does this TedTalk relate to the story Eleven
Rachel's teacher forced her to go through public humiliation on her birthday when she was eleven. Why are teachers shaming anyone, let alone a fifth grader? She is scared to speak up because no matter what she says the teacher will always be right, after all her teacher saw her wearing the sweater. Rachel is like a tiny fire, good things will make her shine brighter and negative experiences will dim the light. Mrs. Price just extinguished her fire. Teachers are never at fault for their mistakes, even when students try to explain their side of the story. Yet, they rarely ask for the students side, they are happy to make assumptions that fit their need. I will never understand why teachers feel the need to tear kids down. Rachel told her it was not her red sweater, but was forced to put it on because some "mean girl" decided to throw out the idea that it belonged to her. The poor girl is pushed to tears by her teacher in front of the whole class and Mrs. Price shakes it off like nothing happened. She now feels even worse because her birthday is normally the highlight of her year. She is supposed to be happy, but now she has to spend the rest of her day with tear-stained cheeks. Facing the world as if nothing bad happened. She now gets to wish she was never born, something no one should have to go through. Her parents will sing, they will give her presents, they will try to make it a special day, but now she wants to go away, "far away like a runaway balloon," she thinks to herself. She woke up with hope and is put to bed with shame. Rachel got to tell her story, but how many others are left untold? Clint Smith spoke of the dangers of silence. Everyone has a story to tell, yet they are tucked away to preserve someone's feelings, avoid stigma, or simply because no one will listen. Yet it is so easy to make fun of someone for their story when we only see the outside. We do not know what they are going through. We do not know their story. Also, friends are supposed to stick up for you and far to often they are quiet when their friends need they the most. Smith spoke about his own silence and how damaging it was to those around him. In my opinion, sometimes it is the silence that screams the loudest; it is deafening. I bet Rachel will not go to school being herself ever again. She might get over it and forget the details, but she will not forget how that teacher made her feel. It happens at all schools, we all have our "red sweater moments." But for some, it is not as bright and flashy as a sweater; their truth is held in their heart. Silently they hold it as tight as possible, never giving it to anyone because they fear they will drop their fragile secrets.
ReplyDeleteYou really had a good blog this week. It was very easy to understand, it actually gave me a better understanding of the tedtalk and the story about Rachel. I like how you said that "sometimes it is the silence that screams the loudest." I agree with you 100% on that statement.
DeleteHannah, I agree when you say that teachers rarely ask the student for their side of the story. I'm sure it has happened to many of us and it is hard to communicate when your voice is not being heard. I think that is why it was so hard for Rachel to speak or find that words to say. That are the fact that she just turned eleven and should not even have to deal with this kind of problem. I enjoyed your view on this blog.
DeleteI can believe the thoughts Rachel has because I felt almost the same every year. The only difference between me and Rachel is that I never really thought of it as being all the years together, I only thought that I didn't feel older. She tells us, "growing old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other." What she means by this is, take the onion for instance, if we are like an onion each layer of the onion represents a year of our lives. No matter how many layers we have, all the layers are still underneath the present layer we are on. It's still inside us and we can't leave it, so it is a part of us until we die. This is why we do what Rachel said and experience different ages of our past. When we cry, giggle, laugh, want hugs, want cuddles, or even just being nurtured. Rachel's point is almost crystal clear, to me that is anyway. We aren't just the age we are now, we are every age we have been up until this point and will always experience those ages in different ways.
ReplyDeleteIn her class room, she became overwhelmed, so she said she felt as if she was all ages from one to eleven. We usually see this feeling in children of those ages. I for one can say that I know the emotional side of things much more than most. I am emotional everyday, but I do exactly what Clint Smith's talk was about, I am silent about it. I keep it in because I am afraid others will judge me and push me around and that others would be silent and not help when I need them most. I become afraid, or all ages from one until now, and just keep it in. I can say though, being a man who does both speak and not speak about his feelings is hard. Sometimes it slips. I want to be like Rachel and feel all ages when I'm emotional, but I want to be like Clint at the end of his speech and stand up for everything that I can't let down. Maybe standing up for everything and speaking when we need to is the ages after eleven. We start to realize that we need to be better than the eleven year old we all once were. I took the onion idea from Rachel and combined Rachel's writing and Clint's speech saying that maybe we are an onion up until we are eleven, but we only start to ripen and become the better person around twelve. Although we will experience those younger days, we now have a reason to act up and say what we should, rather than sit, stare, and try to avoid our problems.
It's cool that you can relate to the story that well and I fully agree. How can you be one age and the next day when it's your birthday feel an entire year older. You are right, some days we kind of "go back to our younger days" but it happens to everyone.
DeleteI thought that you conveyed your message of your personal feelings to that of Rachel's well. I also really like the onion analogy, how you broke it down and made it your own.
DeleteJake, I thought you gave out your message well in this's blog. You used many of your own thoughts and opinions which made it njce and original.
DeleteWhy are kids scared to go to school today? Not only are kids scared to go to school because of there classmates bullying them, it may even be the teacher who is buying them. In this case Rachel is being humiliated by her fifth grade teacher. In the TedTalk Clint Smith says that our voice is the most import thing that we have, and we should use it. So why was Rachel so scared to speak up and say that the sweater was not hers? She says In her story that no matter what she says the teacher is always right, and I believe that this is wrong. Kids should be able to talk to their teacher about anything, not be scared to talk to them. Rachel told Mrs. price that it was not her sweater so why couldn't the teacher just believe what she said and take the sweater back? Instead Mrs. Price beloved what the "mean girl" in the class had to say about her seeing Rachel wear the sweater before. The author shows us Rachel's feelings in many different ways. When Mrs. Price starts to get mad at her for pushing the sweater to the corner of her desk, Rachel says that she closes her eyes for a little bit and the sick feeling she had in her stomach starts to go away, but the she opened her eyes, and the red sweater was still sitting there like a big red mountain. I think Mrs. Price took it way to far when she made Rachel put the sweater on, that was just uncalled for. Some may think that maybe Mrs. Price didn't notice that everything she was doing and saying was upsetting Rachel, but then she started to cry, and the teacher still did not even do anything. After school Rachel gets to go home and act like everything is okay and nothing happened. Her parents will sing happy birthday to her and get all kinds of presents. Rachel just sits there and wishes that it was not her birthday and she wasn't eleven. No kid should never have to feel this way, not only because it's her special day, but just cause she's a little fifth grade girl. Clint Smith also talked about how it could be danger to you and those around you to be silent. Sometimes you have to be the one to speak up and say something not only for other people but sometimes for yourself. Everyday Rachel will go to class and act as of Mrs. Price did not do anything wrong and everything is just "clear skies" because she has to or else she will just humiliate her again in front of everyone. Rachel just has to forget about it, which eventually I believe she will, but I know if it was me in this situation every time I would see Mrs. Price it would make me feel awful about myself, and i am sure that is how Rachel feels everyday going to school.
ReplyDeleteYour first two lines are so relatable! I also like how you wrapped it up by saying that she will feel aweful every time she sees her teacher and how you relate to that. I agree that the teacher went to far by making her put it on. Even if it was hers she should not have been forced to wear it after being called out for it.
DeleteYou kind of explain how some people are more sensitive than others and that teachers should be more mindful of this. That doesn't go to say that all teachers are like that but I'm sure we both have a couple in mind that are big meanies.
DeleteCassidy, I think that you hit the mark when you said that it was uncalled for when Mrs. Price made Rachel put the sweater on. Sometimes people do not know when to stop and this was a prime example. If I was Rachel I would not know how to react and I would probably cry too. I believe that she should be held accountable for her actions as well.
DeleteWe all been humiliated before, it happens sometimes when you least expect it and sometimes from people who you would never think would deliver it. A teacher should be someone who encourages you, helps you, and who's purpose is to help you succeed. When Rachel was humiliated like that, I would imagine she felt a sense of betrayal. What kind of teacher does that? Rachel feels helpless against the teacher to begin with, then she gets "thrown under the bus" in a sense by a girl in her class. The worst part I think isn't when that "stupid" girl says, "I think it belongs to Rachel," it's when the teacher doesn't even bother asking Rachel if it really is hers.
ReplyDeleteWhen she talks about the way growing old works in her mind, I find myself very intrigued in her way of thinking. She says, "Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one." These connections are very interesting and opens your mind to a different way of veiwing things. I've never seen it like this, I agree that it doesn't feel like your a year older. The only times I think it will feel that way is your 18th and 21st birthdays. Although I could be very wrong with that too. The only reason I felt any older on my eighteenth birthday was because I could be out later on the road and I could buy more things. A twenty first birthday however, that will probably feel a little more like your older.
It's a real problem, kids getting humiliated by individuals meant to help them thrive. Not long ago a relative of mine was publicly humiliated in school, he too is eleven so I'm sure it has made a huge impact on his life. He was told to wear painting on a certain day of every week. Well, some of the kids either didn't remember or weren't told not to wear them the next week so they showed up in the painting clothes rather than their uniform. It was him and another student in his class. They were told to call their parents and have them bring them their uniforms or they could get some from the storage room. Well, I'll refer to him as my cousin, he was nervous to call his mom for some reason so he just decided to wear whatever they could find him. What do they give him, a girl shirt, and pants that are way too big. He was scared to say anything so he didn't and just wore them. Now just because he didn't say anything doesn't mean he was okay with it and that certainly doesn't excuse the fact that the adult gave the child embarrassing clothes. Luckily his friends helped him out and he never got made fun of but once again it doesn't make it any less ridiculous what the adult did to him. At some point you just have to think if some adults get their kicks out of making younger people feel humiliated and just terrible in general.
The example story that you used about your cousin was a good idea! I also like how you say that the worst part of the story was that the teacher didn't even bother to ask Rachel if it was her sweater. You had a good blog, but you didn't talk about the TedTalk at all.
DeleteI think it is very true to say we have all been humiliated before. But the fact that in this case it was a teacher makes it much worse. Teachers ARE supposed to support students and make them feel safe! I think your example of your cousin is unfair and unfortunately happens way to much. Thankfully his friends stuck by him even if the teachers were not understanding of what they made him go through.
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ReplyDeleteThe incident that Rachel goes through makes her wish that she wasn't eleven or even having her birthday at all. At the age of eleven, a person should be excited for their birthday and want it to be the best day ever. Instead of good things coming out of her birthday, Rachel feels upset about the sweater and that she cried like she was three in front of her entire class. She definitely does not have a very high view of herself and does not feel as important as should would like to. Mrs.Price does not listen to her and just assumes that she is wrong when she says that the sweater is not hers. Because of this, she definitely doesn't not feel like an important person. This will probably have a big effect on the rest of Rachel's life and that is why it is important for teachers to not belittle students especially at the age of eleven. She feels the way that she does because of the way she has been treated. She was confident going into the day and was excited about not only being ages one through ten, but now also eleven. All of this was ruined by one teacher not listening to what she had to say. It is easy to tell how upset she is because she uses the simile "My whole head hurts like when you drink milk too fast." This also helps to show that she is not only hurt emotionally but also physically because of crying and sobbing. Her feelings do change but not for the better. When the other girl finally remembers that the sweater is actually hers, it makes the whole situation that much worse because it could have been very easily avoided. She shows a lot of anger because she is thinking about different ways to get rid of the sweater. This makes it very hard for her to concentrate on eating cake with her family for her birthday. We have all been upset before and it is not a fun position to be in. It is easy to become upset right after a situation occurs, like when a loved one dies. Rachel was very upset at the time of the incident, and she will soon feel better about it and not get so upset. Some of the pain might stay and afor the most part she will get over it, but the memory will always be with her.
ReplyDeleteI like how you connected Rachel's story to the fact that teachers should be careful towards students feeling. Belittling students may have a huge impact on the rest of their lives. I agree with you.
DeleteI believe how you explained the blow to Rachel's childhood was very accurate. There was definitely an ongoing negativity toward the situation that only worsened when she discovered she truly was not at fault, even though she never was at fault in the first place.
DeleteWhen Rachel awakes on her eleventh birthday she feels that she is both eleven and ten. She also feels that she is nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one all at the same time. So she feels that she is all her previous ages in one, and barely feels eleven, she still feels ten because nothing has changed to make her feel eleven. She had an experience on her eleventh birthday that changed how she felt about her age. She was in school on her birthday and teacher held up an old red sweater in which she believed was Rachel's. So the teacher put it on Rachel's desk. And Rachel pushed the sweater to the top corner of her desk. The teacher then made her put it on and she "felt like all the years inside of her were pushing at the back of her eyes when she put one arm in that sweater that smelled like cottage cheese." She then started to cry in front of her entire class. Then a girl came up to her and claims the red sweater as hers. She felt as if she no longer wanted to be eleven, but 102. She wanted to be as far away from this moment as she could. She described it as "a runaway balloon." Rachel went from wanting to be eleven to wanting to be as far away from her eleventh birthday as possible, all because of a painful experience that occurred on that date. I would describe her sweater experience as a ballon full of emotions from all her previous years swelling until the pressure is so immense it bursts because the pressure was being fed by her teachers continuous embarrassments of her. Rachel entered into the dangers of silence because being silent withheld her eleven year old ability to speak. Therefore, she was destined to an outcome contrary to what she expected and wanted.Thus, creating the swarm of emotions she felt at the end of her story. This silence can be tied to a TED talk entitled The Danger of Silence. In this talk Clint Smith speaks about his life experiences with silence and how it keeps us from many things. With silence we can not achieve. This was the culprit of Rachel's story. Our voice is our greatest tool and we must use it as much as we can to avoid misunderstandings. All Rachel needed to do was not be silent and speak from the start.
ReplyDeleteI think you placed the similes from the text in the perfect part of your essay. It brought great meaning to your paper. Good work.
DeleteRachel has finally turned eleven and is expecting to enjoy her special day. She comes to the realization that she feels "like her little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one." It is like every age is bottled up inside and she still feels ten. She wishes that she is one hundred and two so that she could use that experience of all those years to help her in the situation with the red sweater. Rachel does not deserve to be humiliated in front of everyone by her fellow classmate and especially not by her teacher. Rachel does not know how to handle the situation and feels as though she has to be silent. The words will not come out of her mouth to explain the sweater does not belong to her and this makes her feel small. She does not feel confident in herself and no elven year old girl should have to feel that way. Some adults similar Rachel's teacher believe that they are correct due to their age. Her teacher just pretends as though nothing happened when she found out that the sweater truly was not Rachel. Her birthday is now ruined because while she is blowing out those candles the thought of the sweater will still be in her mind and how she was humiliated. Rachel is like clay because she can be molded and shaped to believe something. Her teacher made her believe that she does not have a voice. As presented in the TedTalk, silence is deadly. When one does not use their voice they can hurt others. What if the mean girl had not said the sweater belonged to Rachel? Would anything have been different if a student spoke up and defended Rachel? If Mrs Price had used her voice to work out the problem instead of causing another one, then Rachel could have been spared the humiliation. One should use their voice to help others whenever they can because we must treat each other as human beings who deserve kindness and help.
ReplyDeleteI think you did an excellent job in giving a summarization to both the TED talk and the essay. It was very easy to follow. Good work.
DeleteMandy, I thought you did a very good job with this topic. I honestly didn't think about what would happen if the other girl didn't say anything. It most likely would have gone better for her. I agree with you on this. Nice job.
DeleteMandy, I thought you did a great job expressing Rachel's story. You hit many key points as you compared it to the TedTalk. Great blog!
DeleteIn this world of in the now people, silence is hard to come by. This could be because of the constant need for anything that will occupy our thoughts, whether it be work, school, friends, or even social media. To the naked eye, there is no silence in this world. This is only because they cannot hear the screams of the oppressed, the ones who are shamed into silence. This is done by a number of ways. In the TED talk, the speaker spoke about some of the ways he has seen silence. This includes someone with a lot of money talking down on others they do not deem worthy, the oppression of LBGT communities, and the lack of charity to those who cannot gain enough to get themselves off the streets. Silence is a tool used by those who know how to use it. Silence is when there is nothing to fight for, when all the fight is taken, or when there is no fight left. Silence is when there is a sinking feeling in the gut, the knowing that something bad is going to happen if one speaks. Silence is fear. This can be seen in many different stories. The one movie that came to mind when I was reading this was the Bridge to Terabithia. In this story, there is a boy who was bullied every day, and instead of telling someone, was just quiet and sucked it up. He was someone who succumbed to silence when he did not think that there was any hope left. The fight in him was smashed between a home where no one listened to him and a school where no one liked him. Silence is a tool that the most cunning people use to gain power in the world. If people are scared, then they will have no fight, if they have no fight, then they are easily conquered. In the story of the red sweater, there is silence. The girl is shamed and silenced into accepting the lies that were fed to her because someone told her to. There was that inkling of fear in her, she knew that the teacher was always right, but at this moment, she began to realize that sometimes the teacher was not always right. She wished to be 102 at this moment. When one thinks about it, being that old has its ups and downs. The one obvious plus about it is that they already have the experience to be able to deal with anything coming their way. But, they never got to live those years, to be able to learn about what is good and bad. Sometimes the journey is more fun or important than the destination. At that very moment, the girl feels oppressed. She has potential to be anything she wishes, but at that moment, she is only able to be the girl that the teacher is making her out to be. She first talks about how as soon as you turn another age, you don’t feel it. The thing is, I believe that she felt eleven on her birthday. This is because she had to deal with what she was given, which is something that most adults have to deal with as well, which is silence. She really had to grow up at that moment, making her eleven at that very moment. Yes, she did cry, but she never whined or complained about what the students did to her, on her birthday nonetheless. She also speaks about how we have all the other ages in us already, and when we grow another year, then we don’t stop being who we were, we just gain some knowledge on life and living. This is why I believe that people don’t really change, they just grow. Who they were before is still with them, it just depends on what they do with it that matters.
ReplyDeleteI agree that in some respects, silence is indeed fear. I especially agree with your last sentences though, just because we grow older doesn't mean we stop being who we were. We can never really permanently erase part of ourselves.
DeleteI believe one of the strongest messages in this story lies in age itself. Sandra had explained the detailed concept of how every year we grow older, we are still all of our previous ages. Once someone is 23 years old, it doesn't mean that their 5th year of living has magically disappeared once they'd passed it. In other words, the author is trying to explain that we are an amalgam of our past selves. Following that way of thinking, we must not judge others by their age, simply because we are no different. Whether it be the same exact age or not, we were all pitiful or juvenile at one point in our lives. So, we have no viable reason to judge or chide others for regular behavioral ticks, and this is due to the fact that we were once the same and always will be. Think of baking as an example, you use a multitude of different ingredients to make the end product, the cake. Still, when you have the finished product, it's not as if it is no longer composed of eggs, flour, and whatever else. The fact that the teacher publicly embarrassed the poor child with no hard evidence that the hideous sweater belonged to the birthday-girl was also completely ridiculous. That whole ordeal again comes back to the concept that we should never judge people- so what if she was skinny? Her skinniness and the comments from the other lass were not enough to prove that the sweater was indeed hers. Who knows if the classmate even liked Sandra? Perhaps the teacher was bias, maybe she liked the other student more and just decided to accusation. I also found it strange that it was the poor kid's birthday but yet it did nothing to soften the blow of an unjust scolding. All she did was push the gross thing to the side, does that really warrant such a harsh chiding that pushes someone to the point of tears? In my opinion, it does not. Even if it was her coat, maybe she was embarrassed and unnerved by its untidiness. A teacher should never ever utterly humiliate a student like that, mostly because they can't fully understand their home situation or numerous other factors. Still, what they can understand is what it is like to be that age. All in all, people need to learn to have more sympathy and think before they go off on innocent children.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you tied the equality of people with disregard to age into this blog. I did not quite think of it that way myself, and it is interesting to see a different perspective. Also, I thought that the analogy of baking a cake was very relevant and useful in this situation.
DeleteOn her eleventh birthday, Rachel admits to feeling no different. She describes herself as a composition of all the ages leading up to this point, rather than just simply being eleven. She compares growing older to an onion, where your outermost layer is not fully representative of who you are because of the other layers that lie within. Rachel also states that she does not feel smart at eleven, and that won’t change until she is almost twelve. When the sweater is given to Rachel, she is unable to explain that it is not hers. She is silent. Because she fails to clarify that the sweater does not belong to her, she becomes embarrassed. She fights back tears as the sweater that appears to be “maybe a thousand years old” sits on her desk. As she tries to slowly reject the sweater by pushing it away, Mrs. Price becomes agitated with her behavior and makes her put it on. At this point, Rachel begins to cry, which she views as a younger version of herself coming out. When Phyllis claims the sweater as hers, Rachel quickly tears it off, showing that she is still embarrassed from what had happened. The damage had already been done, so someone else ending their silence did not help the situation much. Rachel is still upset, wishing she was anything but eleven so she could put this day far behind her, washed up in a sea of sorrows. The silence of Phyllis relates directly to the words of Clint Smith. Clint explains that silence can often speak louder than words. People often remember things that were not said when they should have been rather than what was said. He also states that silence is “the residue of fear”, which may explain why Phyllis failed to speak up earlier. But the biggest connection between the words of Clint and and Rachel’s story is that sometimes silence is pain, which is what Rachel felt on her eleventh birthday.
ReplyDeleteOn her eleventh birthday, Rachel views herself differently than most kids would on their eleventh birthday. She does not view herself as older, no longer ten years old. She sees herself almost in pieces, as she picks out what age of herself she is portraying with each thing she says or does. She doesn't see herself any differently than she did yesterday. At the beginning of the day, Rachel is okay with all of the years bottled up inside her, she feels confident that she has added another. That is, until the red sweater comes along. Rachel felt good about her years, until she felt that she didn't have enough. She doesn't know how to respond to that red sweater on her desk that isn't hers, the mean girls in the room telling the teacher it is hers, or the teacher not believing her. She feels as though a younger part of her is coming out, making her remain quiet about the situation, even though the red sweater isn't hers and she doesn't want it. She is trying to remind herself that today she is eleven, and that the eleven year old part of her needs to speak up. But she can only summon the younger Rachel who doesn't know how to stand up for herself. In this moment she hates herself for Minot being able to use her eleven-year-old wisdom to change this situation, and she hates herself for not having more years under her belt to react to the situation differently. At a last attempt to summon the oldest version of herself in hopes that the situation will resolve itself, she speaks up once more, but the teacher only orders her to put the sweater on. This finally humiliates Rachel's eleven year old confidence, and she is completely broken down to a younger version of herself, left here crying with a sweater that isn't hers and not a clue as to how she can change anything. She is left only wanting to have more years so that she wouldn't have been broken down like she was.
ReplyDeleteRachel's feeling about herself were changed after this experience. She, at first, believed that her eleven-year-old knowledge would build up over time and give her the ability to act her age. However, on her birthday, she was faced with an experience that required all of her eleven-year-old knowledge that she didn't have yet. Instead of wishing to have this knowledge, she only wished to have a knowledge way beyond her own. She didn't want to be herself, she only wanted to be "one hundred and two instead of eleven." In that moment of embarrassment during math class, Rachel no longer viewed as a growing tree truck with layers of her old self, as she had mentioned in the beginning. Instead she saw herself as a tree that was too weak for the situation, one that needed more layers to keep it strong and healthy. She viewed herself as a tree that didn't have enough layers to protect itself from a storm, but in that moment it needed more layers than it could ever have.
This TedTalk video takes this story of Rachel and puts it into real life. It is no longer just a story about a girl with an unfortunately ugly red sweater that isn't hers, but a story that describes what ignorant silence can amount up to in a person. Rachel was telling the truth, but no one was believing her, so she simply stopped fighting it. It built up inside of her, and suddenly she didn't know at all how to show the truth about what she really believed about that ugly red sweater. In real life, we begin as people who speak the truth. But as we go through life, nobody listens to our truths, and they are often shot down, so we stop speaking them. Then we are left going through life carrying these truths like the burden of the ugly red sweater on an eleven year old girl, until someone finally speaks up about them, and we are finally freed from the silences of our the truths that we simply stopped speaking.
I agree with your mention of how the little girl felt that she hadn't accumulated enough years to be of authority. I also liked your perspective of how she viewed being 11, because she was trying to act more mature.
DeleteIn this work, Rachel discovers that there is a time to be respectful and silent and there is a time to stand up for yourself. On her eleventh birthday, she was wrongfully accused of leaving her coat in the back of the classroom. She was demanded to take the blame for the childish act even though she did not commit it. Silence, silence is the culprit in this situation. Rachel bring only eleven believes she does not know enough or have the authority to argue her case. She knows that it is not her jacket, but she refuses to let her teacher know that is the truth. As a result, Rachel falls back to the actions of her three year-old self and becomes overcome with emotions which leads to public humiliation and a steady flow of tears. This whole situation, this sad submissive situation can be linked to how Rachel sees herself. She views age as a defining factor to one's wisdom and authority. The more one ages the more one can argue a case and win the debate. She believes that she is not able to engage in conversation with her teacher because, since she is older, she must know best. This way of thinking is altered at the end of the story, her feeling change. She begins to see age as not a defining factor of authority, but rather as a journey that makes us who we are. Sure, our past self might come flying out in some childish ways, as the author states, "I'm crying like I'm three." Some days these emotions from our younger days will become present but these times are what shape us. That is what I think Rachel learned. She learned that even though she might not be as wise, it is wrong to let someone walk over you. It is wrong to be silent. In Rachel's story, each year is like a link on a chain. It is through these links that the chain becomes strong and whole. Being silent and submissive allows for these chains to be weakened. In the TED talk about the dangers of silence, the speaker tells us to speak as if we have a microphone under our tongue, to speak like someone is listening. This relates to Rachel's story. She needed to stand up for herself and use her words to stand up against the humiliation she was wrongfully receiving. I think in these works, it becomes apparent that being silent is sometimes the worst thing we can do.
ReplyDeleteI think you did a good job of incorporating the idea of silence into your blog since the beginning. I also think that you have an interesting take on how Rachel sees herself. Lastly, the way you used a chain as a relation to our age and how Rachel views our age was very creative, I thought that was very good.
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