In Toni Cade Bambara’s short story “Raymond’s Run,” Squeaky goes through a metamorphosis. Her attitude changes from a little girl who will do anything to maintain her reputation as the fastest runner in the neighborhood. She is a tough young woman who will stand up for her beliefs until she either has to fight or flee.
I’m ready to fight, cause like I said I don’t feature a whole lot of chit-chat, I much prefer to just knock you down right from the jump and save everybody alotta precious time.
She is fiercely protective of her brother Raymond, who lives with a developmental disability. Her only family responsibility is to care for him, and she protects him from the wrath of other neighborhood children. One of her important attributes is that she is willing to practice constantly to maintain her prowess as the fastest runner. In fact, she despises other girls who pretend they do not need to practice in order to excel.
She has a difficult time maintaining friendships with other girls, and believes role models are lacking.
Gretchen smiles, but it’s not a smile, and I’m thinking that girls never really smile at each other because they don’t know how and don’t want to know how and there’s probably no one to teach us how, cause grown-up girls don’t know either.
The day of the May Day race, Squeaky deposits Raymond on the playground and prepares for the race with no thoughts of anything but winning. As the race unfolds, Gretchen proves to be a formidable opponent who garners Squeaky’s respect. The two exchange a knowing glance and a genuine smile. Raymond, on the other side of the fence, matches Squeaky stride for stride in the race, which causes her to see him as more than her disabled brother. In her eyes, he becomes a person with possibility. Both of these events change Squeaky’s attitude from a self-involved, tough girl to a young lady who sees other possibilities for Raymond, and her relationships with other girls. She even considers asking Gretchen to coach Raymond with her, as her mindset changes.
And I look over at Gretchen wondering what the “P” stands for. And I smile. Cause she’s good, no doubt about it. Maybe she’d like to help me coach Raymond; she obviously is serious about running, as any fool can see. And she nods to congratulate me and then she smiles. And I smile. We stand there with this big smile of respect between us.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Does Squeaky's attitude change by the end of "Raymond's Run" by Toni Cade Bambara? If so, how?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Summarize the major research findings of "Toward an experimental ecology of human development."
Based on findings of prior research, the author, Bronfenbrenner proposes that methods for natural observation research have been applied in ...
-
One way to support this thesis is to explain how these great men changed the world. Indeed, Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) was the quintes...
-
Polysyndeton refers to using several conjunctions in a row to achieve a dramatic effect. That can be seen in this sentence about the child: ...
-
Both boys are very charismatic and use their charisma to persuade others to follow them. The key difference of course is that Ralph uses his...
-
At the most basic level, thunderstorms and blizzards are specific weather phenomena that occur most frequently within particular seasonal cl...
-
Equation of a tangent line to the graph of function f at point (x_0,y_0) is given by y=y_0+f'(x_0)(x-x_0). The first step to finding eq...
-
Population policy is any kind of government policy that is designed to somehow regulate or control the rate of population growth. It include...
-
Gulliver cooperates with the Lilliputians because he is so interested in them. He could, obviously, squash them underfoot, but he seems to b...
No comments:
Post a Comment