I would say that Snot can mostly be described as an assimilated woman. She is never seen talking badly about troop 909, unlike most of the other girls, and she usually keeps pretty quiet. When she does talk it is to disarm the situation and give the troop 909 girls the benefit of the doubt. Even when they are planning to go and confront them in the bathroom she wants to stay back, because she has no reason fight the white girls. She receives psychological abuse from her peers for being the one that doesn't follow the crowd. This happens in the form of name calling, like when she is threatened to be called a bitch for potentially telling their leader.
In the last section we find out that Laurel did not feel good about her father's decision to make the Mennonite's paint the porch because it would be the only time a white person would labor for a black person. I think Laurel didn't like it because she did not posses ill feelings towards white people, and therefore was somewhat assimilated.
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I too would have to agree with Kris. Snot's ability to not speak badly about the other girls is amazing when you think about the amount of peer pressure that is evident in our society today. I can only imagine the pressure that Snot would have felt as she stayed back from emerging into the bathroom. Not only was she standing up for herself, but some of the other African American girls could have interpreted her behavior as dishonor to her culture.
ReplyDeleteSnot seems to have the desire for "equal rights" to exist in her daily world. As she struggled with her father's decision for the white person to paint, I was impressed by her courage and as Kris stated, "she did not posses ill feelings towards white people." This instant can be viewed as assimilating.
I also would agree that Snot could be viewed as an "assimilated woman." I would also say she could be viewed as or is working towards being viewed as an "emergent woman." She shows throughout the story the ability to "create new life and new choices for herself." Her standing up and not participating in the bathroom shows she was able to recongnize the problems and avoid them even though doing so would most likely lead her to further oppression. She obviously struggled with this, but I think she was working very hard to becoming the person she wanted to be and not become the person her culture and society wanted her to be.
ReplyDeleteI have never really had to experience anything like this so far in my life. I have had to stick up for some of my beliefs religiously, but I don't think my doing so led me to being treated harshly. I can only imagine how hard it would be to go through this every day at such a young age. I respect the people and children who can do this because I know it must be very hard.