On Pale Green Walls

I've red the essay "On pale green walls". It is wrote in 1st person narrator and is about conflicts and misunderstandings between children and adults in the upbringing. Violet, who is the main character and the 1st person narrator, writes about her strive for love, attention and understanding. She thinks the adults misunderstand her signals, and it makes a lot of frustrations and uncomprehending for Violet. She feels very lost, unloved and unhappy.

Violet is a little girl who is very mute, but she always tries to get some attention from the adults. Violet is very fascinated by Virgin Mary, but she doesn't know who she is. She sees her everywhere she goes and she doesn't understand why she is all over the place. She becomes fascinated to the point of obsession with the Virgin Mary who is described as beautiful, serene and loving. Violet wants to identify with her.

The relationship between Violet and her mother aren't so well. Violet doesn't feel that her mother loves her, and Violet's mother has some weird reactions when Violet says something. Violet's father is not a part of the family; he is just sitting with his newspaper in the couch. Violet needs attention from her parents and she have some special needs, which her parents can't handle, and that is why Violet gets very jealous of Virgin Mary's baby.

Violet is very jealous of Virgin Mary's baby, because Virgin Mary loves the baby, and Violet feels that her parents don't love her. "I stared at the baby's face and hated it as I'd never hated anything before. She was looking down on it, smiling at its bald head, and I could tell how she loved it." Virgin Mary is a kind of symbol of the mother Violet wishes she had because Violet's mother doesn't live up to her imagination of a loving mother. Violet doesn't care about Jesus, the baby Virgin Mary has, she only cares about the attention he gets.

In a section of the text Violet finds a dead bird and she picks up the bird embryo and then she identify with it and wants to care for it. She wants to give the bird some love, because she doesn't get some love from her mother.

Violet identifies with a superior, who is Virgin Mary, as well as an inferior being, who is the bird. She doesn't seem to care about religion or social norms, and it is showed through the very immediate narrator style. She only thinks about her own needs and problems and no one else, which is very normal for a little child.