Overview of Boys And Girls Essay

Alice Munro is the author or a story called Boys and Girls. This story is told in the point of view of a young girl. It takes place possibly during the 1940s. The story is about a girl and her family living on a fox farm. The girl has trouble facing that boys and girls have different roles and although she attempts to take on the responsibilities of a boy, she realizes that that will not be accepted by anyone. The basic idea of the story is that the girl learns the value of being a boy and being a girl in that time period. One of the central symbols in this story is a horse that lives on the farm named Flora.

Flora represents a rebellious, violent, and free-spirited horse. The authors choice of depicting Flora in that way may be because Flora may be what the narrator strives to be but cannot because of the image of what a girl behaves like and what a boy behaves like are pushed on her in the story. Flora is not mentioned much at the start of the story and this may be because in the start of the story, the author does not over think the difference between a boy and a girl until later on. Once Flora integrates into the story, the narrators thoughts begin to change. The first evidence of this is when the narrator watched the male horse be killed by her father and Henry but does not want to watch the female horse, Flora, be killed at the hands of the men. The author may be trying to point out that because the narrator is beginning to feel like she is being over powered by everyone elses opinions of a girl, she did not want to visually witness the slaying of a strong female. Another point that is made by the author is what the definition of a girl was to her before and what it is now. The word girl had formally seemed to me innocent and unburden, like the word child; now it appeared that it was no such thing. (225)

Another factor that the author points out is when the narrator decides to open the gate for Flora when she is attempting to escape being shot by the authors father and Henry. The reason for letting Flora be free, even though she knew that Flora would not really get away (230) may be because she had accept the fact that girls were treated differently than boys and it was nice for her to witness a girl getting away from having to be downed by men.