Personal Response Essay Assignment

In this assignment, you will outline and draft a personal response essay to the following question:

Reflect upon the texts provided below to help create your response to the question.  Use at least one of the texts provided; you may also refer to other details from The Arrival or “The Shape of a Girl”, as well as your personal experiences.

Excerpt from “The Shape of a Girl” We are amazed by Sofie, how she can spend hours, entire afternoons, down there on all fours.  How she never cares about who sees.  Good little horsie.  That’s what Adrienne says and then Adrienne  is flying, having been bucked by Sofie the horse on the couch.  And then Rachel has a turn on Sofie’s back and Sofie sends  her flying too.  We love Sofie the horse.  We make tiny braids all over her head; we paint rainbows on her cheeks. And then one day, one normal un-special day Adrienne comes to school and announces that it’s penalty day.  We don’t know what penalty day is.  Adrienne explains that on penalty day one girl is chosen and everyone is mean to that girl for the whole day.  Why?  Adrienne doesn’t know.  It’s just a part of school.  Adrienne offers to go first.  We get to be mean to her first.  I want to go first too. At first penalty day is hard to figure out.  There are a lot of rules.  The person we have to be mean to has fleas, of course.  Everyone has to write FP for flea proof on their hand. You know something, Trevor?  By the end of grade four penalty day had become as complex as World War Two.  But who the enemy was became entirely simple.  Now all the girls had FP written on their hands, all the girls but one.  I don’t know why it was Sofie.  It just was.

Image from The Arrival