Essay on ”Fortune Cookies” by Sophia Lanley

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The text is a short story, named Fortune Cookies, published in 2000. The text is written by Sophia Lanley. The text is about a guy, who has a slightly criminal background as a pickpocket. This guy used to work for a man; he calls him his old man. It seems as if, he is like a dad for him. Suddenly the ‘old man’ disappears, and the guy now has to do for himself – something he had never tried before.
One day, when the guy is out picking pockets, he sees this little boy wandering with his wealthy dad. This little boy attracts his attention very quickly, when his dad yells at him. Later, he finds this boy standing in the front of a shop, he seems sad and therefor he offers him to go back home with him. 1. person narrator is used, through the whole story. That gives the reader a stronger relationship to the narrator and this sad story.
The narrator has gone through a lot through his life; he has grown up in a trailer park alone with his mother, we are never told where his father is. The narrator also has an uncle, who seems like an alcoholic small time crook.
The guy talks about his family relations and how his mother don’t want him to be as his father or his uncle on page 1 line 19: I remember she cried a lot because she was always worried that I would turn out like my “stinking, rotting, lout-of-a-father.” I never could figure out who she wanted me to turn out like. Uncle Barney? The only job that I ever knew he had was working as Santa Claus once a year….. I was five and Santa pulled of his beard and asked me to get him a stiff drink. I will say that the narrator has just finished being a teenager, because it seems as if he don’t think of himself as an adult but not really as a child either. He has difficulties identifying himself as a human, as an adult. Therefor he uses the little boy to help him identify himself.
The guy sees himself in the little boy, he

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