May-Lee Chai's Short Story 'Saving Sourdi'

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“Saving Sourdi” ,May-Lee Chai Plot, and Character Analysis “ May-Lee Chai was the first one in her family to be born in America; she lived in fourteen states and four countries. Her short story, “Saving Sourdi” was inspired by a family from North Dakota and a variety of people she met from traveling the world. The Narrator is in first person point of view and it is told by Nea, the younger sister of Sourdi. The plot of “Saving Sourdi, it shows Nea being aggressive, impulsive, immature, and overly protective of her older sister Sourdi. The plot shows different encounters where Nea tries to save Sourdi, who turns down the help. The plot and characters in Saving Sourdi shows the dynamic of a younger sister who is trying to save an older sister who does not want to be saved. Nea is impulsive and does not care of the consequences when it comes to saving her sister. The drunken man placed his arm around Sourdi and at that moment in the restaurant she took drastic measure to protect her sister without caring about the consequence in stabbing a man. “Some men got drunk …show more content…

Sourdi is growing up and Nea is finding more ways to interfere to protect her. When Duke and Sourdi started to form a friendship she starts to find any way to dislike Duke. “Chopstick boy I called him, just to be mean” (Chai 184). Nea does not want to comes to terms that her older sister is replacing her with someone else. “I use to think of him as something like a bookmark just holding a certain space in her life until it was time for her to move on”.(Chai par. 4). When Sourdi fell from running from Duke, Nea blamed Duke for making her fall. “He tried to put his arm over her shoulder, too. I was going to push him away”. Sourdi put her arms around his and leaned against him. The action by Sourdi is displaying how she does not want to be saved by her sister who consistently tries to save her from everyone who comes in her

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