TER 6 : corrigé text the new girl

THE NEW GIRL
INTRODUCTION :
the text we are going to peruse is entitled THE NEW GIRL.
First of all this text is indeed a true story written by Marc Mitchell .Marc is in no way a professional writer but just an amateur who sent his narrative to Paul Auster , the best-selling author,who decided after a workshop to collect all of the true stories that he had heard during his trainings.This has given birth to a book entitled True Tales of American Life published in 1999 from which this text was extracted.
What is fascinating about all of those stories is that they present diferent layers (couches/niveaux) of understanding.
Indeed this text follows the same formula.In a first time, it can be viewed as the simple account of a childhood memory as we will see in a first part.But reaching the end of the story we understand that the trauma is far deeper than we might think.
Another asset of all those texts are the socialanalysis that they carry.here it is more of an histrical nature as we will see in a second part.
So without further ado let's start our presentation which I hope will be able to convey the depth of this text.

THE BASIC FACTS :
- the characters : allison and the narrator/ age
-the link between the two " best friends by default"
- the new girl : has just moved in ( line 15)
- vivid physical description line 11 to 15 so it dawns upon us that if Marc recollects her physical appearance after all those years it is because the event was a traumatic one for him and is still painful.
-Still he seems to have that kind of analytic mind as he provides us with a lot of details about the weather (line 1)Indeed it is as if the author was using the scorching ( brulant) weather as a reason to what happened next .

THE FIRST ENCOUNTER
-first encounter between the narrator and the new girl: bumping into each other and smiling about it.
-positive description of the new girl by the narrator line 14 : her smile was expensive.
- first encounter with allison / allison's reaction and rudeness to the girl.

TRYING TO UNDERSTAND ALLISON'S ATTITUDE
- the historical circumstances ( explain the situation in alabama/ the historical circumstances)Still the action occured in the 1970s so quite some time after the Civil Rights movement.So it proves that although the law has been changed , the mentalities are still the same.
-We now have to understand what could motivate such a behaviour cming from a girl of 10.
The author is highlighting the impact of education as the girl herself is unable to eplain why she should loathe a little girl that she does not even know.(line 42) But she has her parents to blame as she quotes her mother line 39.
From those lines we grasp that passive imitation without analysis is the root of all evil.Indeed Allison behaves in such an outrageous way because her parents told her so and moreover since she is mimicking what she hs previously seen the grown-ups do.
As if it was not obvious enough, the narrator adds his own example to the lesson as he himself imitated Allison ( line 26).

PURPOSE OF THE AUTHOR :
-so the narrator's aim is obvious here.He wants to stress that racism has no valid grounds.It is the sheer imitation of an aggressive behaviour while not even trying to understand the other individual .
What is even more frightening here is that it proves that the root of the problem is the education provided by the parents.A change of mentality will thus start to perate only after a few generations.That's why the 70s might have been too early to see any improvement.
Still what I find reassuring here is that the natural propensity of the narrator was to welcome the new girl with open arms which makes this text even more endearing or such is my opinion.

OPINION ON THE TEXT :
why do you think it is a good or a bad text?

CONCLUSION :
I fibnd this text educational because instead of focusing on major historical events such as the Washington Speech by Martin Luther King.Here the author is given us a glimpse of the fate of the American blacks such as he could have been experienced by children.It is quite oving to see that children could be so crual to one another and to realise that this little girl will be ostracized in her very own neighborhood.It allows us to grasp the ordel of the black community at the time.Still if we had been given the whole short stry to read we would hve seen a more positive message as the narrator conclud that he had been haunted by this story ever since and that he had written this story in the mod dream that the New Girl might one day read it and understand his regrest and his sorrow.Indeed as this little girl was treading on new grounds for her community, se was indeed a NEW girl in more meaning than one.