What realization does the narrator have at the end of the story? How doesthis change her understanding of her father and of racial dynamics more generally?
What will be an ideal response?
- In the end, the story is really about Laurel (“Snot”)—her growing sense of morality and what it means to grow up as a black girl in America.
As the girls leave camp, Laurel remembers an unusual moment from her past when her father asked a Mennonite man to paint his porch. She shares this memory with the girls on the bus, who—except for Daphne—have little appreciation for her revelation. Having lived through the futile racist drama at camp, Laurel finally begins to understand what her father meant when he said: “it was the only time he’d have a white man on his knees doing something for a black man for free” (par. 193).
This seemingly incongruous moment from Laurel’s past proves essential to a full understanding of “Brownies.” When Daphne silently chooses to bend over and clean the restroom without any thought of receiving a Brownie patch as a reward, she speaks louder than Arnetta to Laurel and to the reader. The incident with Troop 909 mysteriously leads Laurel to understand her own past and what her father meant, “though I didn’t like it” (par. 194).
The realization that “when you’ve been made to feel bad for so long, you jump at the chance to do it to others” offers neither hope nor promise that these Brownies will be leaders with “courage, confidence, or character” who will break a cycle of racial stereotyping. Of all the girls, Daphne alone asks Laurel if her father thanked them, and when Laurel replies, “No,” the full epiphany comes to her as she “suddenly knew there was something mean in the world that I could not stop” (par. 195). This, coupled with Laurel’s earlier statement that “we had all been taught that adulthood was full of sorrow and pain, taxes and bills, dreaded work and dealing with whites, sickness and death” (par. 96), leaves the reader to question whether or not Laurel will even try to stop the meanness.
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Anche __________ è di Perugia? (la signora Battaglia)
Write the appropriate subject pronoun for the people being addressed or discussed at a party in the following sentences.
Comprensión oral. Vas a escuchar un pasaje sobre el concepto de la muerte en el mundo hispánico. Antes de escucharlo, lee la lista de oraciones. Luego, escucha el pasaje e indica si cada oración es verdadera o falsa. Vas a escuchar el pasaje dos veces.Click here for audio.Los obituarios pueden aparecer en la primera plana de los periódicos hispánicos.
A. verdadero B. falso
¿De quiénes son estas cosas? Someone informed your professor that an item was left behind in the classroom by one of her students. When she goes to retrieve the item, she discovers that several things have been left in the classroom. Write the article and the item in boldface in the plural forms.____________________ Y, ¿de quién es el cartel?
Fill in the blank(s) with the appropriate word(s).
What is “front matter”?
What will be an ideal response?