Preciousness Essays - , Term Papers, Research Papers

Preciousness Preciousness is a story that goes beyond the struggles of a teen-aged girl's life, but it also portrays themes of basic life. Themes like, ?letting go? and ?cultural differences? apply to almost all people in one way or another. For that reason, Preciousness is not just a story about a young girl's life, but it's a story about all of our lives. Throughout the story, the reader is presented with a series of conflicts the girl faces. Her main problem was that she had a problem with men and boys. She felt that they were evil and only wanted one thing. I feel that she lived in her own world, where she made all the rules. ?...she swallowed her coffee which the maid, scratching herself in the gloom of the kitchen, had reheated. She scarcely touched the bread which the butter failed to soften.?1 This was extremely unhealthy for her, physically and mentally. Not eating healthily will make a person weak and can lead to many diseases. She did this to have men and boys avoid her, which was also unhealthy. Man or woman, one cannot avoid life and its people. I don't feel it is possible to be psychologically fit if a person cannot interact with a certain group because of a fear they have. Being scared of a certain person in that group is normal, but the entire group is a bit extreme. Life is a learning experience, but you can't fully experience life if you avoid certain things in it. One has to face reality at some point in life, it can be done the easy way, by accepting reality, or done the hard way, by denying the truth. The main character of the story decided that it would be better if she did things the hard way. The rising action, when the two boys were approaching here on an early morning, lead to a major problem. At the climax, the two boys groped the girl. At that moment, her bubble, malignantly protecting her from the world of reality, exploded. The destruction of her bubble led to an amazing revelation that changed her life. She was no longer a girl, but a young woman. I feel that this was when she started accepting the truth about life and about whom she had become. She then understood that you couldn't avoid life. I think that there was more than one main theme in this story. Prejudice, fear, and hate are three themes that can be closely linked together. These factors play a large role in the story and in our lives. Like the girl in the story, we tend to make assumptions about other people before we actually know it's true. The main character assumes that all men and boys want that one thing. She feels that it is her place to classify other people, in this case, men. ?Afraid they would ?say something to her,? would look her up and down.?2 Even though the men didn't care about her, she still had a fear of them. People fear what they don't understand and have no control over. The girl had no control over the men and boys, so she feared what they might say or do to her. She is fearful of putting trust into men, scared of how they might take advantage of that trust. As the days built up, she developed a hatred of men. She knew that they ?knew.? I believe that neither side really knew anything truly significant about each other. The girl couldn't have known what the men knew and what they were thinking. The men probably didn't know much about the girl either. I think that the girl surrounded herself in a bubble that was much worse than reality. Repression was also a very considerable theme. For the whole time, she repressed her true self. She tried to hide what she was becoming, which was a woman. She had to learn to let go of her childhood and start accepting the responsibilities of being older and more mature. This is something everyone has either gone through, is going through, or will go through in life. It's a force of nature, like a hurricane or earthquake. It