Quote:
“The little taste of victory did not satisfy a hunger in my heart. In my mind I saw my mother far away on the Western plains, and she was holding a charge against me” (Bonnin 1121)
Summary:
This is the end of “The School Days of an Indian Girl”. After Bonnin won a prize in the speech competition for her college, she is not totally happy because she feels she had abandoned her mother and had disobeyed her and taken a totally different path of life.
“The little taste of victory did not satisfy a hunger in my heart. In my mind I saw my mother far away on the Western plains, and she was holding a charge against me” (Bonnin 1121)
Summary:
This is the end of “The School Days of an Indian Girl”. After Bonnin won a prize in the speech competition for her college, she is not totally happy because she feels she had abandoned her mother and had disobeyed her and taken a totally different path of life.
Response:
I think this moment was a very defining moment in Bonnin’s life, because before she still felt like she was in a liminal place between her Indian self and her assimilated white self. However, from this point on, she decided on her own to stay in the white people’s land and make her way through with effort and dedication, even if that meant disobeying her mother.
It is true that the taste of victory wasn’t enough to satisfy her heart, and it would have been very sad if it had satisfied the hunger in her heart. The struggle she is having between returning to her old life and staying in this new world, is the struggle that will lead to her success, because once she tasted victory she proved to herself that she was capable of making a change, that she was capable of making a difference in a world where her race was being looked down on.
Furthermore, the charge her mom would hold against her is basically her conscience telling her that she must not forget where she came from and that, even if she wins the world, she must keep her feet on earth and know that she can’t have everything. I think this charge against her is the weight of making her own decisions, because Bonnin chose to stay and continue her education, and by doing that she challenged her mother, but she can’t do anything about it, because she is choosing her own path to follow, and she must be aware of and accept the consequences.
It is true that the taste of victory wasn’t enough to satisfy her heart, and it would have been very sad if it had satisfied the hunger in her heart. The struggle she is having between returning to her old life and staying in this new world, is the struggle that will lead to her success, because once she tasted victory she proved to herself that she was capable of making a change, that she was capable of making a difference in a world where her race was being looked down on.
Furthermore, the charge her mom would hold against her is basically her conscience telling her that she must not forget where she came from and that, even if she wins the world, she must keep her feet on earth and know that she can’t have everything. I think this charge against her is the weight of making her own decisions, because Bonnin chose to stay and continue her education, and by doing that she challenged her mother, but she can’t do anything about it, because she is choosing her own path to follow, and she must be aware of and accept the consequences.
1 comment:
20/20 Wow, where did you learn that word "liminal" -- applied perfectly in this context (very post-structuralist, given the conversation we had in class on Wednesday).
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