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1. 1 2017-11-18T09:55:14-08:00 Kalan Hurdle 72777df5ad8a17476da8fe9a899e5ebfb5327de1 Citation Kalan Hurdle 1 plain 2017-11-18T09:55:14-08:00 Screenshot of Gameplay from "Fitting the Pattern" by Christine Wilks. Taken by Kalan Hurdle, 2017. Kalan Hurdle 72777df5ad8a17476da8fe9a899e5ebfb5327de1

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• 1 2017-11-10T17:33:47-08:00 Theme in "Fitting the Pattern" 9 plain 2017-11-18T09:24:14-08:00 The primary theme at work in "Fitting the Pattern" is being oneself amidst the scrutiny of others. The identity issues that the narrator experiences comes from one source: her mother. It is evident that during her adolescence, the narrator's mother was a key influencer in her life. However, as she began to mature, the narrator realized that she did not want to follow in her mother's footsteps after all. She ended up going to college to study film. And yet, constant thoughts of her mother's opinion stayed with her, making her question if dressmaking was really the only skillset that will get her anywhere in life. The narrator even has a dream one night that makes her reflect on her journey thus far: "...and one night I dreamt I was threading a sewing machine with unexposed film in broad daylight. No, I didn't follow in her footsteps but somehow our footsteps were superimposed." The narrator even goes as far as to say that her refusal to wear the garments her mother made was somehow a rebuttal of her mother's love, stating that "...it seemed a waste of her hard work, a spurning of her love."  After years of her mother never actually measuring her waist when she was a child, the narrator also feels guilty when she cant fit in the clothes her mother makes her when she is older. She believes that she should be thinner, and that she should be able to fit; she shouldn't be "the wrong shape." 
  
  ​It is understandable why the narrator's mother's perception of her dominated her thoughts for the majority of her adolescent years. According to Elizabeth Heilman, "Relationships are very important in the identity of girls and women" (188). One would think that  the relationship between a young girl and her mother would be amongst the most important. In the case of the narrator, since her mother was overbearing to begin with, it is understandable why she had a hard time figuring out what she wanted to do with her own life. Her mother's own beliefs and values of how women should behave interfered with her daughter's development of her identity. As a result, her daughter always thinks about what her mother would want, instead of herself. We can clearly see in the E-Lit work that she has a hard time letting go of her mother's opinions even when she leaves home.
  
  The next page has a poem that I wrote based on the E-Lit work.
  
  Kalan Hurdle