Olivia's Blog

Charlottes Influences

The people in our lives have influenced us in many ways. They make us who we are today. The Metaphor by Budge Wilson is about a girl named Charlotte who enjoys her junior high english teacher Miss Hancock. Miss Hancock and Charlotte’s mother influenced Charlotte to be compassionate, to understand that not everyone thinks the same way, and to accept people for who they are.

Charlotte’s mother and Miss Hancock taught Charlotte to be compassionate and to care for others. Charlotte’s mother demonstrates compassion towards her volunteer work and in the way she cares about Charlotte. Her work included chairing committees, running bazaars, and sitting on boards, “she juggled her community jobs, her house work, her cooking and her grooming.” She loved her community work, “If one were to believe her admires, the mainstay of the community, the rock upon which the town was built”. This shows how much Charlotte’s mother did care and how much compassion she has towards her community. Miss. Hancock showed great compassion towards literature and how she cared for her students. She made the kids feel excited to learn about poems, plays, and stories. She made her students argue about the “meanings and methods” and “creative intentions”. “She had a gift of making most of us want to write, to communicate to make a blank sheet of paper into a beautiful or at least an interesting thing”, this compassion rubbed off on her students.

Miss Hancock and Charlotte’s mother showed Charlotte that not everyone thinks alike and thinking in a different way then someone else isn’t a bad thing. Charlotte’s mother was very neat and organized, she liked things a certain way. When Charlotte was young her mother would make her organize where her blocks were put. There was never a mess in their house. There backyard was spotless. The grass was cut evenly, there were no leaves during fall, and no swing set or sand box set up. Her mother liked everything to be perfect, “my mother is a flawless, modern building, created of glass and the smoothest of pale concrete”. Simple and clean is the best way to think in Charlotte’s mothers opinion. Miss Hancock thinks very creatively, very wildly. She is not afraid to make a mess as long as it is inspiring. This way of thinking goes along with her career as a creative writing teacher. You can tell when Miss Hancock walks into a room how wild she is, her clothing said it all, “Miss Hancock’s clothes, which were nearly always as flamboyant as her nature”. Miss Hancock thinks outside of the box and is not afraid to stand out.

Charlotte learned to always accept people for who they are by watching Miss Hancock and her mother. Charlotte’s mother did not accept Miss Hancock for who she was. She thought that there was only one way to live life. She disliked Miss Hancock because she was over enthusiastic and not very organized. When Miss Hancock died she was not surprised, she claimed that anyone that unorganized could not survive being a high school teacher. When Charlotte thought it was her fault that Miss Hancock died her mother’s comforting words were “don’t loose perspective, she couldn’t keep order and she had only herself to blame”. This didn’t make Charlotte feel much better but it is all her mother could think of to be the reason she died. Miss. Hancock accepted everyone she encountered, she was a very loving person. In Miss Hancock’s english class she made sure she treated everyone’s work with the same respect. She let everyone’s opinion be spoken and heard. Her class learned to listen to every opinion out there even if they didn’t necessarily agree with it, “we were free to respond positively to Miss Hancock’s literary excess without fear of the mockery of our peers”. Every student had a voice and that shows she accepted everyone.
Miss Hancock and Charlotte’s mother influenced Charlotte to be compassionate, to understand that not everyone thinks the same way, and to accept people for who they are. Neither Miss Hancock or Charlotte’s mother are perfect but Charlotte has been influenced by their strengths and weaknesses. The traits that Charlotte has learned will make a positive influence on her life to come.