Erika Moreno
Eng102-Sat
10/06/2011
Assignment#1

Alone with Blackberries
In Norris’ “Blackberries," the child comes to realize at a young age that we are all different people. Evidently this is true, we are all unique, each of us with a different personality, different standards we live up to, different feelings and thoughts. We will all come across people who are different from ourselves. The child in this story cannot change the fact that his mother is self-centered. What happens when the people we love are different from us?
Throughout the story, Norris reveals the mother as a self-centered individual. In one specific incident, while the child is getting a haircut, the mother states, “I, my husband and I, we thought it was time for him to look like a little boy” (71). Notice how she corrects herself from “I" to “my husband and I.” She catches herself for a split second being selfish, for the child is not only her child. Meanwhile the child is caught in the middle of a troublesome marriage his parents continue to proceed.
Throughout the events that take place we can also conclude that money plays a big factor for the mother. “Oh, I hope so. It’s expensive enough,” she states when referring to the cap she purchases for her son (71). At times children can be carless, and carless enough her child ruins the cap by using it as a holder for the blackberries that the father and son bring home for her. “If we had money, it would be different,” she tells the father (73). The woman fails to realize that sometimes it is the thought that counts, but the mother was not able to see past the cost of the cap.
As we get older we begin to learn from our experiences, some of which may turn out to be life changing. Norris describes at the end of “Blackberries” the experience that the child acquires. “He began to cry quietly…and the child began to understand that they were