please read this and answer this: Why did you choose this reading? What did you
ID: 108839 • Letter: P
Question
please read this and answer this:
Why did you choose this reading? What did you enjoy, what made you think, how did you relate and become interested in the story the author is telling? What works about the writing? (Use specifics and even quote bits of the story to support your ideas.)
What is the moment of epiphany for the speaker/central character/reader? How do you know?
What is your sense of what will change for that central speaker/narrator? Why do you think that?
Butterflies" by Patricia Grace
The Grandmother plaited her granddaughter’s hair and then she said, “Get your lunch. Put it in your bag. Get your apple. You come straight back after school, straight home here. Listen to the teacher,” she said. “Do what she say.”
Her grandfather was out on the step. He walked down the path with her and out onto the footpath. He said to a neighbor, “Our granddaughter goes to school. She lives with us now.” “She’s fine,” the neighbor said. “She’s terrific with her two plaits in her hair.” “And clever,” the grandfather said. “Writes every day in her book.” “She’s fine,” the neighbor said.
The grandfather waited with his granddaughter by the crossing and then he said, “Go to school. Listen to the teacher. Do what she say.”
When the granddaughter came home from school her grandfather was hoeing around the cabbages. Her grandmother was picking beans. They stopped their work.
“You bring your book home?” the grandmother asked.
“Yes.”
“You write your story?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your story?”
“About the butterflies.”
“Get your book then. Read your story.”
The granddaughter took her book from her schoolbag and opened it. “I killed all the butterflies,” she read. “This is me and this is all the butterflies.”
“And your teacher like your story, did she?”
“I don’t know.”
“What your teacher say?”
“She said butterflies are beautiful creatures. They hatch out and fly in the sun. The butterflies visit all the pretty flowers, she said. They lay their eggs and then they die. You don’t kill butterflies, that’s what she said.”
The grandmother and the grandfather were quiet for a long time, and their granddaughter, holding the book, stood quite still in the warm garden.
“Because you see,” the grandfather said, “your teacher, she buy all her cabbages from the supermarket and that’s why.”
********* Patricia Grace (1937- ) is a New Zealand writer of novels, short stories, and books for children, Ms. Grace is one of the most successful Maori writers in English. Her short stories address the issues of injustice to Maoris in new Zealand law and society.
Explanation / Answer
Butterflies by Patricia Grace is a simple short story revolves around a child and her grandparents. It deals with very deep rooted topics in society. It introduces two levels of society and their views about very simple entities, like butterflies. Teacher, member of an educated society who boasts about beauty of butterflies and a farmer and his family who have to kill butterflies in order to protect his crops. It made me think, and also made me see the world from another perspective
Ending is the most interesting part of this story, here author reveals her conception of different classes, tribes or groups in society, where their culture, lifestyle, even views are different from on another. Which developed from the environment they are brought up.
“He said to a neighbor, “Our granddaughter goes to school….” Indicates educational background of the characters, this line indicates that they are socially backward community.
“…… her grandfather was hoeing around the cabbages. Her grandmother was picking beans. They….” Sets background for the climax, this sentence implicates that they are farmers, who produce their own food .
“She said butterflies………………., that’s what she said.” Here author draws an image of butterflies through eyes of developed societies all around the world, we all sees butterflies as beautiful creatures.
“your teacher, she buys all her cabbages from the supermarket and that’s why.” this last, closing sentence, decides the direction of the story, it implies distinction between educated society and farmers. Even without explaining the problem author had done an amazing task by creating a sentence which can give meaning to the entire story by just one sentence.
According to me, central character being the child, who still don’t have a clue whether her teacher liked the story or not, realizes that, her teacher buys food from supermarket, not farming crops like she or her family does, thus she will understand the concept of diversity in society. I think it will also change my concepts about society, it helped me understand how perception change from person to person.
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