The Narrator's Change In Red Dress By Alice Munro

695 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay o red dress by Alice Munro

At the beginning of the story “Red Dress” Alice Munro suggests that the narrator realizes the real meaning of the “red dress”. However, the narrator does not change at all. The narrator tries to be more confident to herself, but she failed it. The narrator cares about what do other people feel about her, and that makes her become more confident to herself. Nevertheless, at the end of the story the narrator does not make a change, which is become more confident to herself. The narrator and Lonnie do not care much about the school works, but relationships and sexual competitions because the narrator cares about how do other people feel about her. There is a Christmas Dance coming soon, so the narrator and Lonnie discuss the boys or the partners. …show more content…

However, the narrator meets a girl who named Mary Fortune who makes the narrator chooses to stay. During the talk, Mary tells why she comes to the dance, and explains what is “boy-crazy”. “I was trying to decorate.” (10) “They just get up and hang out with the boys, they do not even care whether the decoration is done or not.” (10) The people who suppose to decorate with Mary just like the friend of the narrator Lonnie. Mary and the narrator both suppose to have fun with their friends, but now everything is different. Their friends do not care of Mary and the narrator anymore because of the “boy-crazy” “Listening to her, I felt the acute phase of my unhappiness passing.” (10) Because the narrator finds someone who has suffered the same thing as her, she chooses to …show more content…

However, her classmate Raymond Bolting asks to have a dance with her. “Nobody told him to, he did not have to, was it possible, could I believe it?” (11) This represents that the narrator feels really surprised and have more confident to herself. Raymond takes the narrator home and kisses her which makes her feel happy and makes her life “possible” which means to be more confident. The narrator comes home with a happy mood which does not disappoint her mother. However, the narrator says, “I had almost failed it, and would be like to failed it.” (12) which means she does not be confident enough to herself. The narrator does not know whether Raymond is going to hang out with her again, or not. Although she becomes more confident, she can not promise that she will be confident enough every time. Thus, she failed to change which means to be confident enough to

Show More
Related

  • 'Clover' By Billy Lombardo

    390 Words  | 1 Pages

    After reading the passage, “Clover”, by Billy Lombardo, a reader is able to describe a particular character’s interactions and analyze descriptions of this individual. In the passage, “Clover”, is a teacher, Graham. He, in his classroom, shares something that had occurred that morning. In this passage, the author, Billy Lombardo, describes interaction, responses, and unique characteristics and traits of the key character, Graham.

    Read More

  • Make Lemonade by Euwer Wolff

    1549 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...aVaughn a story about a blind lady, Jolly’s point is that you have to be careful with who you trust and that you can’t change your past. Plus, LaVaughn states,“I suddenly see the sign of her life: Nobody told me.” She also understands that Jolly didn’t get herself into her mess. Jolly learns from LaVaughn how to prioritize and that getting an education was a good idea. Jolly becomes more dedicated and responsible after she goes to school and it made her life easier. Jolly and LaVaughn may have diverse personalities, but they still learned something from each other.

    Read More

  • Misogynistism In The Yellow Wallpaper

    1065 Words  | 3 Pages

    The narrator begins the story by recounting how she speculates there may be something wrong with the mansion they will be living in for three months. According to her the price of rent was way too cheap and she even goes on to describe it as “queer”. However she is quickly laughed at and dismissed by her husband who as she puts it “is practical in the extreme.” As the story continues the reader learns that the narrator is thought to be sick by her husband John yet she is not as convinced as him. According

    Read More

  • The Writing of Alice Munro

    1314 Words  | 3 Pages

    See the full list of vacancies. McMullen, Lorriane. Shameless, Marvellous, Shattering Absurdity: The Humor of Paradox in Alice Munro.î Probable Fictions: Alice Munros Narrative Acts. Ed. Louis K. MacKendrick, a.k.a.

    Read More

  • Adolescenthood In T. Coraghessan Boyle's Greasy Lake

    936 Words  | 2 Pages

    ... One of the women offers them drug but they reject it which they would accept the invitation before all of the incident. When the women says that the narrator and his two friends seem “ pretty bad characters”, the narrator just wants to cry. They finally get the acceptance into the world of being “bad guys” however, they want to run away from it. Boyle also tells the story in such transitional form, from night to day, from water to land to express the change of the three teenage characters which is from naive to mature.

    Read More

  • The Issue Of Authority And Res

    763 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Alice Munro's the Red Dress, the narrator and her best friend Lonnie have two totally different relationships with their respective guardians. The narrator, without the mention of her father, is in care of her mother, whom she thinks butts in too much into her business. She sort of resents her mother for being so too close and nosy about her private life. Her mother's stories, which at one point seemed interesting to her, is now 'become melodramatic, irrelevant, and tiresome'. She knows that her mother only means well but sometimes she wishes she could be like Lonnie. Lonnie is in care of her father; her mother had passed away some time before. Her father never notices her and does not show his affection for her, she is pretty much on her own. The narrator considers her as a 'Blue-Baby' and privileged. The narrator also sees her mother as 'shameless and obscene'; she tries to direct her friend's attention away from her mother as much as possible. In the story, we are told by the narrator that she was 'never comfortable for a minute' in high school and 'was close to despair at all times'. She hated being called upon to do anything in front of an audience, whether it is the class or just the teacher. She reveals that she hasn't accepted herself as who she is, always wishing to be like someone else, she hasn't learned to respect herself as a growing teenager which makes it hard for her to understand the relationship between her mother and herself. Since she lacks the proper understanding and respect for her mother and herself, the narrator has trouble seeing her mother as an authoritative figure, which makes her less tolerant to the other authoritative figures in her surroundings.

    Read More

  • Lives of Girls and Women: Curiosity by Alice Munro

    1381 Words  | 3 Pages

    The process in which human beings advance through different stages in their life towards adulthood is highly hellacious. Moreover, it is very likely that one might encounter some difficulty in this progression. However, it is in human nature that we learn by failing at things, then mastering them by repeating them again and again. In the novel Lives of Girls and Women, Alice Munroe presents the life of Del Jordan in a very interesting way. The novel is divided into eight stages of Del’s life, where she experiences different scenarios which ultimately give her a better understanding of life. Even though being curious has its pros and cons, at the end of the day it leads to the enhancement of a person’s inner self. In the novel Lives of Girls and Women, Del the protagonist can be analyzed as being a very enthusiastic girl. Moreover, her curiosity proves to be a dynamic benefit of her actions.

    Read More

  • An Examination of Royal Beatings by Alice Munro

    894 Words  | 2 Pages

    It has been said of Anton Chekhov, the renown Russian short-story writer, that in all of his “work, there is never exactly a point. Rather we see into someone’s hear – in just a few pages, the curtain concealing these lives has been drawn back, revealing them in all their helplessness and rage and rancor.” Alice Munro, too, falls into this category. Many of her short-stories, such as “Royal Beatings” focus more on character revelation rather than plot.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Lust, by Susan Minot

    661 Words  | 2 Pages

    As portrayed by her thoughts after sex in this passage, the girl is overly casual about the act of sex and years ahead of her time in her awareness of her actions. Minot's unique way of revealing to the reader the wild excursions done by this young promiscuous adolescent proves that she devalues the sacred act of sex. Furthermore, the manner in which the author illustrates to the reader these acts symbolizes the likeness of a list. Whether it's a list of things to do on the weekend or perhaps items of groceries which need to be picked up, her lust for each one of the boys in the story is about as well thought out and meaningful as each item which has carelessly and spontaneously been thrown on to a sheet of paper as is done in making a list. This symbolistic writing style is used to show how meaningless these relationships were, but the deeper meaning of why she acted the way she did is revealed throughout the story.

    Read More

  • Coming of Age in Alice Munro’s "Boys and Girls"

    1071 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls,” there is a time line in a young girl’s life when she leaves childhood and its freedoms behind to become a woman. The story depicts hardships in which the protagonist and her younger brother, Laird, experience in order to find their own rite of passage. The main character, who is nameless, faces difficulties and implications on her way to womanhood because of gender stereotyping. Initially, she tries to prevent her initiation into womanhood by resisting her parent’s efforts to make her more “lady-like”. The story ends with the girl socially positioned and accepted as a girl, which she accepts with some unease.

    Read More

  • Boys and Girls by Alice Munro

    829 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...alized that “a girl was not, as [she] had supposed, simply what [she] was; it was what [she] had to become” she was starting to admit defeat, and then finally when she begins to cry, it is here that the narrator understands that there is no escape from the pre-determined duties that go along with the passage of a child into being a girl, and a girl into a woman, and that “even in her heart. Maybe it (her understanding that conforming is unstoppable) was true”

    Read More

  • Hardships in Boys and Girls by Alice Munro

    1113 Words  | 3 Pages

    Alice Munro's creation of an unnamed and therefore undignified, female protagonist proposes that the narrator is without identity or the prospect of power. Unlike the narrator, the young brother Laird is named – a name that means "lord" – and implies that he, by virtue of his gender alone, is invested with identity and is to become a master. This stereotyping in names alone seems to suggest that gender does play an important role in the initiation of young children into adults. Growing up, the narrator loves to help her father outside with the foxes, rather than to aid her mother with "dreary and peculiarly depressing" work done in the kitchen (425). In this escape from her predestined duties, the narrator looks upon her mother's assigned tasks to be "endless," while she views the work of her father as "ritualistically important" (425). This view illustrates her happy childhood, filled with dreams and fantasy. Her contrast between the work of her father and the chores of her mother, illustrate an arising struggle between what the narrator is expected to do and what she wants to do. Work done by her father is viewed as being real, while that done by her mother was considered boring. Conflicting views of what was fun and what was expected lead the narrator to her initiation into adulthood.

    Read More

  • Music And Dance In Toni Morrison's 'Recitatif'

    1073 Words  | 3 Pages

    The whole text starts with the sentence: ‘My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick.’ From the very beginning dancing becomes associated with something bad, derogatory. It stays in one sentence with sickness, and is the reason why Twyla is left alone in the shelter. Her mother, Mary, does not take care of her because she is dancing. The activity of dance becomes more important than her own daughter. The interesting question here, however, is what exactly is hidden under the verb ‘dancing’. Is Mary parting all the time and thus neglecting her child? Is she a fallen women and a night club dancer? Is she working for a dance company? Twyla simply states that her mother ‘just likes to dance all night’, which would suggest the first option – everlasting party at the expense of the daughter. However, the readers got only one side perspective, being left to choose to what extent they trust Twyla’s judgment. There is a possibility that she colourises because she feels abandoned and unloved. Twyla’s mother is not the only dancing character in the

    Read More

  • Alice Munro's Boys and Girls

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” she tells a story about a young girl’s resistance to womanhood in a society infested with gender roles and stereotypes. The story takes place in the 1940s on a fox farm outside of Jubilee, Ontario, Canada. During this time, women were viewed as second class citizens, but the narrator was not going to accept this position without a fight.

    Read More

  • Freedom In Bridget Keehan's Sorry For The Loss

    871 Words  | 2 Pages

    The story is written with a third-person omniscient narrator. With this technique, an outside narrator who knows everythin, even thoughts, tells the story. Since there hardly isn’t any dialogue in the short story, the omniscient narrator reveals Evie’s thoughts and reflections. The reader then gets to know Evie through her way of thinking instead of her actions, which makes the stor...

    Read More

More about The Narrator's Change In Red Dress By Alice Munro

Open Document