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Red from Green Essay

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Submitted By emilsidelmannn
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Assignment B

Red from Green is a short story written by Maile Meloy (from 2006). The personnel consist of just four people: Sam, her father, her uncle named Harry and his client, Layton. Sam is the main character – a girl. Although the name itself is for both sexes (e.g. short form for Samantha or Samuel) it is clear from the third word in the beginning that in this story Sam is a girl’s name.
The story takes place in Montana at a river where the four characters are on a float trip down a river. Montana is the author’s home and one oft he most sparsely populated areas in the United States.
The narrator stays close to Sam. Sam has just turned fifteen and has been offered a scholarship to a boarding school. In the beginning of the story she is yet unsure whether to accept it or not. But her personality changes within the story – and so does the decision pro or con boarding school: when we meet Sam in the beginning she is still a girl. Sam takes the same trip like every childhood years before. She and her father had been there before „as long as she can remember“. Obviously the trip is a sacred summer family routine, Father and daughter go into the wilderness to spend time together. But this year things do turn differently: Sam wasn’t the little girl she was many years before. She is more and more grown up and experiences the trip in a completely different way than all the previous years. Already in the first sentence the narrator tells that this was going to be her „last trip“. Foreshadowing that childhood trips and with them the childhood days are over. Besides Sam‘s identity crises the reader faces a frustration over her sexuality. She suddenly realize that someone is interested in her as a woman. Sam has never experienced a man who is sexual attracted to her. So when Layton shows her his interest she does not know how to react.
Through the river trip Layton is more and more interested in Sam. Sam is not sure about her being interested but as time goes she lets him seduce her. They go for a walk and Layton teaches Sam how to shoot with a gun and at the same evening things get a bit heated up as Sam gives him massage. Nevertheless, the erotically aspect of the massage is obvious and Sam seems to experience it as „her first time“. Everything she does make her think about what she just did and most of the times she regrets. Her insecurity is showed when Layton compliments her beautiful teeth “She was awkward at fifteen, and praise made her suspicious” Her insecurity makes her afraid of praise and she cannot believe that someone would ever say anything nice or complimenting to her.
Sam and her father are a classical example of a parent-teenager-relationship. Sam is entering a confusing period of her life and her relationship to her parents is going to change. Sam’s dad is going through a life-changing period when his daughter is going to be an adult. He is used to be the one who takes care of her and suddenly she got to stand one one’s own feet. When Sam is giving Layton massage by the fire, her dad is letting them be alone, because Layton is her uncle’s client. Normally a father would do anything to avoid his daughter from being with a man like that, but Sam’s dad is stocked in a hard situation. He hast o leave her anyway when she will be an adult. But he misses he opportunity to protect her a final time. Sam is disappointed about this but in the end she understands her father’s reasons for letting her alone.
Besides of the story and its characters the author also uses a lot of symbols in the text. Those symbols are directly connected with the output of the story: I will give five examples for symbols
Red and green can symbolize very important things in the story. Red is a symbol for warmth and love but on the same hand the colour of blood. Maybe here it symbolizes even the bleeding of a woman during menstruation. Definitely a female symbolic. Green symbolizes hope, strength and nature. Male symbolic.
The gun is symbolizing strength and male attributes: a phallic symbol especially with the detail of the dum dum bullet. The shooting of the gun symbolizes an orgasm.
The river is a symbol for life. Once born at ist source it is wild in the beginning and mellow in the end when fading into the great void of the ocean.
Layton „catches a fish that is way too small“. Obviously the fish symbolizes the girl who is not yet a woman and too young for him. Here fish can be seen as a vaginal symbol – fishing in contrast tot he shooting of the gun.
The wilderness is a symbol fort he chaotic state of mind Sam is in in her crisis of identity in her metamorphosis from child to a young adult.

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