This happens toward the end of the story, on a Saturday when Waverly isn’t off at a chess competition and is stuck having to walk through the public market with her mother.
Waverly feels embarrassed because her mom keeps introducing her to strangers. Keep in mind that Waverly has recently become somewhat famous as a chess prodigy, and Waverly’s mom is bursting with pride over this. But her proud behavior is really embarrassing and frustrating to Waverly, who wants to keep her successes to herself and not be like an object that her mother shows off to others.
When Waverly voices these frustrations, her mom tightens her grip on Waverly’s hand and asks if Waverly is ashamed to be her daughter—and in a huff of frustration, Waverly tears her hand away, runs away from her mother, causes a kerfuffle as she accidentally bumps into an old woman and knocks down her groceries, then disappears.
Of course, Waverly eventually realizes that her action of running off is rather pointless, and she shows up at home later, ashamed.
This question is a good one to ponder because we can interpret Waverly's yanking away from her mother as a symbolic gesture. She wants to separate herself from her mother's influence and her mother's way of thinking, and she's willing to risk offending her mother in order to accomplish this separation.
One way we know that this particular action is important in the story thematically is that it's foreshadowed earlier. In the first paragraph of the story, Waverly tries to yank her mother's hand toward a store that sells bags of salted plums, something she wants. But her mother steers Waverly away from the store and instructs her not to do that. We can see this earlier hand-yanking as Waverly's first, weaker attempt to assert herself in her relationship with her mother. Of course, when Waverly yanks her hand away and runs into the alley toward the end of the story, she's making a much stronger, more assertive break from her mother's control.
No comments:
Post a Comment