The Jacket Compare Contrast Essay

External pressures affect everyone constantly throughout their whole lives. Some of these pressures appear more prominently in an individual’s life than others, making them more influential to that individual. Specific factors tend to affect people rather positively and can raise their spirits up to the sky, while others can appear so negatively that they knock someone down like bowling pins. In “Two Kinds” the main character faces the difficulty of being Chinese and her mother’s expectations because of their race. The narrator in “The Jacket” deals with not having enough money and therefore society automatically categorizes him as poor and lower class. Lastly, the protagonist in “The House on Mango Street” overcomes the discrimination with her gender. Race, class, and gender negatively affect the main characters in

When his mother buys him a new, ugly colored jacket, people at school bully him: “During morning recess Frankie T., the playground terrorist, pushed me to the ground and told me to stay there until recess was over”(Soto 6). Since his mother does not have enough money to buy him a nice looking jacket, at recess, the other kids start to bully him for what he wears to school. He begins to feel that everyone criticizes him constantly, and “The teachers were no help: they looked my way and talked about how foolish I looked in my new jacket. I saw their heads bob with laughter, their hands half covering their mouths”(Soto 6). During those years, he feels as if his ugly jacket caused this mess. He starts to believe that the reason for people’s gossip and laughs originate from him and how ugly his jacket appears. This belief begins all because of how he thinks. This way of thinking causes him to not secure any love, any friendship. Instead he stays lonely and to himself all because he assumes his jacket is the cause for him to not have any type of social