Dazed and Confused March 4, 2011

I Hear:

Cary begins to tell her story as a young black girl that has just gotten into a prep school. At the beginning one predicts this story it to be about her struggles as a black girl in a predominantly rich white school, and how she will adjust to this new life style. This is not the case. Although the story does focus on the school and the new environment she is in, the events that happen in the book are rather boring( in around chapter 6). It almost seems like the author is whining about the events that have happened to her, and always relates it back to the fact that she is black. At first this was annoying, but as the book continued her acts became interesting and in some ways confusing.

I Noticed:

“…my old girl reported that a hundred dollars had been burgles from her room. That, I thought, was real stealing, done , no doubt, by some rich kleptomaniac, the same one who had probably eaten my cheese and crackers the week before” (Cary 113).

At this moment in the story we have seen Cary stealing from her other classmates, but from this quote we see that she doesn’t see it stealing at all. I found this moment interesting because Cary repeated it several times in the novel that she wanted to do better than what the white students and faulty thought she could do. So I find it interesting that as we see Cary going down a path of stealing and doing poorly at school, she fails to recognize it at all. She is neglecting the fact that she is turning into what the white people expected (although the white people never said she would not succeed, Cary came up on this on her own). I just found it interesting how she does not see what she is doing as stealing. It is almost like she is saying that real stealing can only be done by rich white kleptomaniacs. Cary is classifying rich white people into a group and that everyone in the group is the same. This is ironic because throughout the novel we also see Cary talking about how white people do this same thing to poor black people. It seems like Cary is beginning to become what she tried to avoid and she is also adapting the attitude that she believe white people have for black people, but vice versa.To some this up, it doesn’t make sense.

I Wonder:

At this moment in the novel I am confused. I do not understand the main character or were she will go in the book. I want to know why Cary acts the way she does(the actions that were described in the I Notice section)? Why is she so confusing? What will the story bring (at this moment I have no idea)? Will she finally realize that she is becoming the person she did not want to be?

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