Throughout her writing of “School Days”, Zitkala-Sa is able to effectively portray her exact feelings to her audience through her descriptive language. She is able to explain her story in a way in which the readers can easily empathize with her and the people whom she experienced the Carlisle school with. This is made apparent immediately as the story begins in Chapter 1 when she describes how she is observed on the train writing, “Sometimes they took their forefingers out of their mouths and pointed at my moccasined feet. Their mothers, instead of reproving such rude curiosity, looked closely at me, and attracted their children’s further notice to my blanket.” Here, Zitkala-Sa makes the reader think about more than what she is saying, but instead how she is saying it. She is obviously describing the embarrassing ridicule in which she experiences by children and adults gawking at her appearance, but the way she writes about this experience portrays the idea of her feeling like an animal at a modern day zoo. By writing her experience in this way, she also instills a notion of fear and uncertainty of the people who are watching her. Zitkala-Sa adequately portrays this dehumanizing experience on the train ride to the Carlisle school.
Zitkala-Sa once again expands the depth of her writing in Chapter 6 when she returns home from three years at the Carlisle school. She does this when writes “During this time I seemed to hang in the heart of chaos, beyond the touch or voice of human aid. My brother, being almost ten years my senior, did not quite understand my feelings. My mother had never gone inside of a schoolhouse, and so she was not capable of comforting her daughter who could read and write. Even nature seemed to have no place for me.” Here, Zitkala-Sa clearly shows her feeling of displacement and loneliness in her life. This much is clear to the reader, but once again how she explains her problem provides new meaning to the reader. When she says she hangs in the heart of chaos, she is saying that she is not at peace which is crucial because she has finally returned home away from the torment of school. She goes on to explain how her family does not comfort and even nature, in which she did find peace before, has forgotten about her. This passage is imperative to her feelings in this portion of her story because she literally feels disconnected the world itself, rather than just her family. The way Zitkala-Sa writes this, portrays her as something from out of this world, a situation in which greatly distresses her.
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