The New Girl

952 Words4 Pages
The New Girl Paul Auster published the book “True Tales of American Life” in 2001. This book contains many short stories, which is written by ordinary American people – and every tale is true. The book is categorized in the following themes: Animals, Objects, Families, Slapstick, Strangers, War, Love, Death, Dreams and Meditations. The short story “The New Girl” is written by Marc Mitchell and takes place in Alabama. Translation One day, a new girl moves in on Prospect Street, which is situated in a white, lower-middle-class neighborhood. The girl, who is black, seems nice and has a lovely, expansive smile. Another girl on the street, Allison, is unfortunately not ready to accept the new girl because of her different skin color. Allison’s has got her prejudices from her parents and doesn’t care if she hurts the young girl. The narrator is in a difficult situation – on one hand, he really wants to be nice towards the new girl, but on the other hand he doesn’t dare to contradict Allison, who is two years older than him. The peer pressure from his friend determines his act. Twenty years later he still hasn’t gotten rid of his bad conscience. The writer – and narrator – of this short story is Marc Mitchell (M.M.). This tale takes us through one of his childhood memories. He looks back at an experience, where he is eight years old and a friend of his, named Allison, is ten. Almost right away we sense, that the narrator has changed from when he was a child to the day the short story was written – 20 years later. It is clear, that the narrator has developed, because he talks about the incident with regret and with a larger knowledge. He tell us, how he looked up to Allison, even though he probably didn’t like her. He just did whatever she did to fit in. These two kids were the only ones on the street, so he had to make it work with her – even if it meant being
Open Document