“Walter crossed over his side of the line. ‘This is my side, you can’t cross it!’ Pohpoh said. He stared at her in disbelief. He and his friends burst out cackling, hissing and jeering, as though it was the funniest joke they had ever heard. … ‘Is you who draw the line? Or me? I draw the line. I go where I want'” (Mootoo 86).<\/p>\n
“Pohpoh took a tiny piece of blackboard chalk from her pocket. She cut across their path and encircled one of the ants in a line drawn thickly, chalk powder flying. The ants outside the circle marched up to the chalk line and one after the other backed off, refusing to cross. … Within seconds a new path bypassing the circle had been created” (Mootoo 88 – 89).<\/p>\n
Originally when reading these two passages, I just found the parallels between them fascinating. In the first one, Walter creates an imaginary barrier – the line – for Pohpoh. While Pohpoh doesn’t dare to cross the line, she ends up establishing the importance of it when she claims that “this is my side.” When Walter dares to cross the line, Pohpoh sees this as breaking the rules. However, Walter laughs this thought off, claiming that since he made the line, he can go wherever he wants in relation to it. So it surprised me when, in the second passage, Pohpoh creates her own imaginary barrier for the ants. She seems to learn nothing from her own entrapment and instead decides to encircle an ant for her own amusement. Perhaps she wants to claim back power for herself after she seems to lose confidence from the interaction with Walter. Even so, the decision to create a circle intrigues me. If Pohpoh had decided to create a line, the ants would have stuck together and walked around it. By creating a circle, she deliberately ostracizes the ant that is stuck inside.<\/p>\n
Now, however, I also see how closely the second passage relates to Mala’s own situation. She becomes that one ant who, slowly but surely, the rest of the townsfolk refuse to go near. Her house, her father, her overall circumstances, come together to trap Mala in her own chalk circle. While there is no real reason for everyone else to avoid her with such vigor, just as the chalk line serves no real barrier for the ants, they do so anyway until such a time as it becomes habit to treat Mala as an outsider. Both Mala and the ant believe they are stuck, but whether they truly are is up to interpretation.<\/p>\n
Note: I decided to use the name Pohpoh in the first paragraph because I’m talking about her childhood, but I switched to Mala in the second one because I’m writing about her life overall. Hopefully that makes sense. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Walter crossed over his side of the line. ‘This is my side, you can’t cross it!’ Pohpoh said. He stared at her in disbelief. He and his friends burst out cackling, hissing and jeering, as though it was the funniest joke they had ever heard. … ‘Is you who draw the line? Or me? I … Continue reading Trapped by Circumstance<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5601,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346812],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-class-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5601"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}