Summary Of Blood By Janice Galloway

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“Blood” by Janice Galloway narrates the day of a teenage girl starting with her dentist appointment. It is a seemingly normal narrative that actually reveals an in depth analysis about human emotion. It shows a teenage girl who is suffering from low self-esteem. In her adult relationships, specifically male, she constantly gets reinforced that she should be embarrassed because of her gender. This contributes to her own low self-perception. In fact, her own self-image is symbolized by color contrasts between yellow and white. Through her own definitions of the two, it shows how she thinks of herself. This is how the minor binary oppositions- male vs female, yellow vs white- contribute to the overarching binary Embarrassment vs Comfort. The story portrays male and female tensions. It shows …show more content…

Yet, her self-esteem issues become evident when she contrast colors: This is between the colors yellow and white. When she describes these colors she then applies them to herself. Implying that the colors also reflect how she sees herself. She shows her antipathy for the girl’s bathroom when she says “Yellow. The light the sheen off the mirrors. It was always horrible coming here. She could usually manage to get through the days without having to” (91).She associates the color yellow with horribleness and ugliness and uncomfortableness. Then later she says “Her own face reflected yellow over the nearside row of the sinks “(91).On the surface she sees herself as all the things she described the yellow bathroom as. In the beginning, she defines the pulled tooth roots as “a yellow clawhammer” and the actual tooth as “ a deformed parsnip”(89). Since the tooth came from inside her and she associates it with yellow it symbolizes that she does not feel comfortable with herself. These two examples paired with the color yellow reflect her low

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