Soap And Water

Title: Soap and Water
Genre:  Short Story
New Vocabulary:

1. Diffident- lacking confidence, not feeling comfortable around people; very careful about acting or speaking.

2. Frenzied- feeling or showing great or abnormal excitement or emotional disturbance.

3. Thwart- to prevent (someone) from doing or to stop (something) from happening.

Enjoyment:

I found this short story so interesting because from the title it doesn't sound or look like about marginalizing or discriminating the protagonist or the main character. I really like the story because it really happened in reality.

Comprehension:

I quite have hard time reading this short story because there are plenty of words that used in the story is so deep or I am not familiar to it. But I managed to understand what the story is really telling us. I used context clue to the words that is unfamiliar with me.

Reading Summary:

Soap and Water by Anzia Yezierska is a short story. The main character or the protagonist here is girl who can manage to go to college so that she needs to work for her own tuition fee. She worked in a laundry shop. She is optimistic in first, she think that in college she will have a good fate; she is going to express herself, to voice her thoughts. But when she enters collage suddenly she felt people looking at her, she felt outplace. She is being bullied, marginalized and discriminated. She is a working student, she was working in the morning then goes to school in the afternoon then go to work again in the evening she didn't have time to be conscious on her looks she don’t care what she look likes because she is too busy with her studies at the same time working for a living and to pay her tuition. She is a future educator but the sad part is when Miss Whiteside the dean of their collage didn't pass her as a teacher. Miss Whiteside said that she could not recommend her as a teacher because of her personal appearance. She told her that she has oily skin, her hair is unkempt and finger nails sadly neglected. She told her that she utterly unmindful of the little niceties of the well-groomed lady. “Soap and Water are cheap. Anyone can be clean.” said by Miss Whiteside. She felt down that she is not suit to be a teacher. The irony is that she is working in a laundry shop but she doesn't dress well she look like she just wake up. She is being discriminated by all the people that she met because of what she looks like. But when she met a chemistry teacher Miss Van Ness she feel like a normal student that she don’t care what she looks like and what dress she is wearing. Ten years have passed she came to Miss Van Ness office and she told her the whole story of her life.  And after their talk she felt good and free her mind from the person who is letting her felt down. And finally she has the feeling of a normal person and happy for whom she is.