Bad_Blood

Marlan (Commentary) -- Mar.07.11 Bad Blood In the passage given to me, Bad Blood by Lorna Sage, the reader is shared the experience of an adult women's childhood written with her perspective; she tells the reader of her troubled childhood. Starting the passage of by saying that the "playground was hell" makes it apparent for the reader that the narrator had a troubled childhood. She mentions numerous games such as "Chinese burns, pinches, slaps and kicks, and horrible games" all of which seem uncomfortable and wouldn't be considered to be fun games; the mention of such games allows a reader to understand why the playground was hell for her. Her description of "the noise of a thick wet skipping rope slapping the ground" sets the location for the narrator at the time in order to make the reader feel as if they were spectators of the event. The detailed description of the rope such as being "wet" and "slapping" lets the reader see that it was a dirty environment and the narrator succeeds in making the reader feel as if the place wasn't pleasant. The comparison of her life to childbirth makes her childhood seems much more painful. She compares her pain with what a woman would feel when should she give birth. Not only does the reader come to know that the narrator is a woman, as woman could relate to pain during childbirth, but also that she felt truly hurt at such a young age. The narrator tries to evoke emotion in the reader hence allowing the reader to sympathize with the little girl. The narrator clearly addresses the issues she had with her childhood; those being that she could never mark her own space and that was always "shaming to remember", she feels sorry that she had to save her "scabby little self in small people's purgatory." Using the word purgatory has a negative connotation and lets the reader know that the group of children with which she hung out were callous in manner. Not having a friend through childhood is a very menacing experience as there's no one there to share one's feelings with. The narrator hadn't had a best friend until later. The reader can relate to her situation since it is likely to have happened to them as they may have experienced what is like to not have a friend whom which they could share their feelings with. The narrator aims to convey her feelings which she had at the time and does so by describing a common result of not having friends, isolation. She was isolated from her friends and from games. She remembers "fierce contests in the yard" that had "spectators" watching. To be consider an outcast is very hurtful to one's ego therefore she finds comfort in sharing the story that has been haunting her with the reader. Attention is drawn to fear as the narrator tells of Gail's confidence in her body. Being better at inhibiting her body, Gail was adept at "face-pulling, hair-pulling, pinching, scratching and every sort of violence, but wiry and graceful". The narrator felt threatened by this as she states that she felt "like an unstrung puppet". The uses of a simile gives the reader a good example of how she feels in her presence. An unstrung puppet would be helpless and would be seen as not having much control over its own body; this makes the narrator seen inferior and again makes the reader sympathize with her and her inability to stand up for herself. When speaking of her past, the narrator makes it obvious that she avoids thinking too much about her past as she tries to think about descriptions of people or more arbitrary events after speaking about painful experiences such as being "punctuated by fierce contests in the yard"; in order to avoid thinking too much about this event, she starts to talk about her friend and how they were "holding hands" and "giggling" once they would become friends in the future. Although this is a nice segue from her childhood experience to her future relations with Gail, it is clear that she is trying to avoid speaking of the experience. Mentioning that Gail's hair was twisted in "rags" by her grandmother causes the reader to see that the narrator understands what sets them apart: money and family issues. When the narrator compares her living standard with that of Gail's, the reader can observe that Gail has family issues. Gail was a "loner" most probably because of these reasons and her methods of covering these imperfections which were callous. The narrator organizes the passage into three paragraphs because she wanted to have the reader observe her views of her childhood in her first paragraph; next, she wanted to introduce Gail and their relationship; finally, she wanted to clarify that her childhood wasn't worse by using Gail as an example; Gail's childhood was worse as her parents were divorced and she was poor which is illustrated in the last paragraph. The mood of this passage is repulsion as the narrator is repulsed from her childhood experiences. Diction is the main contributor in making the mood stand out since the use of words such as "hell", "purgatory", "burns, pinches, slaps and kicks, and horrible", "ineptitude", "trounced", and "divorced" (L.1-25) all have a negative connotation. The reader is bombarded with such words at the beginning of the passage which makes puts an emphasis on the mood of the passage. All such words have great power since they are direct and aren't likely to have double meanings. The use of descriptive details in this passage further emphasize the painful childhood of the narrator. Describing her time at the school playground as being "hell" allows the reader to imagine a place that would fill them with anxiety since readers often have their own idea of what hell looks like. The passage makes the reader sympathize for the narrator as she never had any happy moments apart from the fact that she could feel good about herself in the last paragraph when she realized the difference between her and Gail to be that Gail doesn't have a family whereas the narrator does. The narrator often uses long and involved sentences and medium sentences. She does so because her mind is reliving her experiences and she isn't suddenly remembering such details. This sentence structure give the reader the impression that the passage has be arranged in the narrator's mind thus allowing the ideas from sentence to sentence to flow together. The way in which the narrator chose to tell her story contributes a great deal to how the reader responds to the passage. The narrator puts herself into the story; this makes the story seem more active. This passage aims to impart on the reader that her childhood was "hell" since she didn't have any friends. The narrative brings out this aim by writing in past tense which makes the story seem as if the narrator is reliving these memories in her mind.