The New Girl Essay

The new girl

The new girl is supposed to be a real-life story. The story is about two friends the narrator who is 8 years old and Alison who is 10 years old. They live in a lower-middle-class neighborhood, one day a little black girl turns up on their street. The little girl has just moved in the house that is placed opposite to Allison’s house. The narrator is being friendly and smiles to the new girl, but Alison is telling the girl to get off the street because of the fact that she doesn’t want to play with “niggers” which can be seen on page 3 line 2 “Allison spat back, “I don’t play with niggers.” The narrator imitates Allison’s behavior, but later she regrets it and wants to apologize to the girl. The narrator sees the girl playing outside, but for some reason she never spoke to her, when she had the chance. Later, the girl and her mother moved, and the narrator describes the feeling of having a knot inside her, because she didn’t apologize to her.

Allison is nice to the narrator, but as soon as she sees a black girl, she get’s mean and tells her to fuck off. The narrator is a nice person, but she bends over to peer pressure, and doesn’t things she doesn’t even want to do, and feels bad about it, but can’t get herself to apologize. The new girl just wants to play with them, because she just moved into the neighborhood, and doesn’t know anyone else there, so she is literally just trying to befriend them.

In my opinion the story has two main themes which are regression and racism. The racism is mainly the way the white girl (Alison) is behaving, especially when she sees the new girl that is black. The regression is when the narrator regrets that she didn’t apologize about her behavior towards the new girl. The narrator describes her feeling of being sorry as a major problem to her. That tells us how she feels about being a douchebag, has turned her stomach into a knot that keeps getting bigger and bigger.

The fact that it’s a real-life story makes it less forgettable. Because the story is true, it’s affecting the reader a lot more. Most people would probably consider the story as being a story that was made to make people consider their acts to people, who are different from themselves. Most people like stories that are true because it gives them a better understanding of the story and they might be able to relate to it.  When the story is true, it is easier to consider it as a real problem. This would be more likely to affect people to do something about the problem, for example it made me think a lot about the racist part of the story, is that really how some people treat other people just because they have a different skin color?

I wouldn’t characterize this story for being directly about racism. I would mainly consider it as being how parents’ attitudes can be adopted into their children and making them think about people the same way that they do. The story tells us, how Allison doesn’t like the new girl, and how she really hates “niggers” and that she doesn’t think they should live among white people. But we do know that she is only 10 years old, so we shouldn’t consider her as being able to create her own opinions about racial appearances. Allison does mention that it’s her mother who tells her that they’ll ruin their house, therefore I see the problem regarding this story, to be children adopting their parent’s attitudes, and we should blame the mother for teaching the girl to judge people on their racial appearance. It’s possible to say a lot about this story, and how it has affected young girls. I would probably see this story having something to do about peer pressure. The narrator is in someway being forced by “others”, therefore she didn’t say sorry. Or you could turn it around, if she said sorry toe the new girl, would she then be accepted? Therefore, she keeps the distance to her. That is pretty much giving us a clue, of this young age, because she isn’t old enough to stand out for herself, and what would happen if she isn’t accepted by the older ones?

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