In the two short stories, “Buttony” by Fiona Mcfarlane and “Sister Godzilla” by Louise Erdrich, the characters teach us about what’s acceptable and unacceptable behavior in society. Both of these stories share similar scenarios such as two teachers, Miss Lewis and Mary Anita, instructing their students to obey their rules, and at the same time showing them that it’s the social norm to respect their superiors. Moreover, the main students challenging their authority reveal that the idea of social behavior is present in these two short stories.
At the beginning of “Buttony” we already see an authority figure exercising their power, which in this case is Miss Lewis. For instance, before her students prepared to play a game of Buttony, Miss Lewis first clapped her hands five times and expected them to quiet down and …show more content…
Surprisingly enough, her students do not hesitate to follow her instructions as they also look up to Joseph, a student loved by all his classmates including Miss Lewis herself. Furthermore, Buttony has become more of a ritual for the whole class because they always enjoy picking Joseph as the button carrier: “We’ll play. Joseph, get the button. The children approved the justice of this appointment”. As usual, everyone wanted Joseph to play the same role throughout the entire game, something Miss Lewis reminds her students not to do. It’s not until Joseph decides to cheat in the game by hiding the button in his mouth just to make his classmates “solve this [game]... and suffer for it” . Although, Miss Lewis was aware of Joseph’s wrongdoing, she decided to let the game continue not realizing that she had made a mistake because as soon as the game was over, she wanted to reveal what Joseph did, yet she still had to settle down her other students. As a result, her students didn’t fully listen to her because she notice they “didn’t copy her”.