Blog Post 4: Zitkala-Sa

I decided to talk about the writing written by Zitkala-Sa called “The School Days,” which talk about her experience of going to a white school as an indian girl.  On section IV called “The Devil,” which talk about her experience when the white people introduce the “white” devil. I her writing she said, “Then I heard the paleface woman say that this terrible creature roamed loose in the world, and that little girls who disobeyed school regulations were to be tortured by him.” In my opinion, this is significant to what the writer is saying because it shows how vulnerable and innocent they are. The white people would tell her that if she didn’t behave the devil will come and get her. when you continue reading you can see how this really affected her because she then explains that she had a nightmare that involved the devil chasing her. It was interesting the amount of detail that she included in this section. She gave a create description of the devil and the nightmare she had. She even explain that when she woke up she decided to take a revenge upon the devil. I believe that she use a lot of description because she wanted the reader to understand and feel how she was feeling when this happen.

The second passage I decided to talk about is from section III called “The Snow Episode,” “With an angry exclamation, the woman gave her a hard spanking. Then she stopped to say something. Judewin said it was this: ‘Are you going to obey my word the next time?'” This section was talking about the time when they got punished because they were playing in the snow; however, she point out that they couldn’t understand what the white people were saying because they didn’t know how to speak english. In my opinion, this is significant because it shows how it was hard to them to communicate with the white people. It shows that the white people didn’t really care that they didn’t understand what they were saying they just assume they did. When the white women was punishing Thowin, he wasn’t understanding what she was saying and the only word he knew was “No.” For me it was interesting the way that she explains her story and how things happen. She explain that Judewin had to say to them that if they told them something they had to answer “No,” which after a moment he realize that he taught them the wrong response. By explaining this part of the story it gave the reader an idea of how it was to not understand what they were being told and how it felt that the white people didn’t really care about that and they just assume that they were being understood.