Theme in "Fitting the Pattern"
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