A Letter From The Fringe By Joan Bauer

Diversity is the state of being different. Different is good. Different changes the way people think and act. Imagine a world with everyone being the same. Everyone’s physical and mental traits were identical. It is as if you were looking in the mirror. Thousands of mirrors surrounding you… following you everywhere you go. This world would be boring, so who would want to live like this? In the realistic story “A Letter From The Fringe” by Joan Bauer, the narrator Dana was always shown as an outsider. Dana and her group of friends bonded by “the strands of social victimization.” They would sit in the back of the lunch room everyday, discussing how to get back at the bullies. One day, Parker Cravens and Dana had to be lab partners. (Parker is

Meaning, she would feel nervous and would get bullied often. In the text, the author said “I swallowed my cookie. Felt my stomach tense. It was too late to grab Sally and walk off” (36). Since the author used the words “Felt my stomach tense”, the obvious conclusion is that she was nervous. Another piece of text evidence is, “I didn’t know what to say. I blursted out, “ ‘they’re total creeps, Sally’ ” (37). This is a prime example of someone being scared because she blursted it out after she did not what to say. My last piece of text evidence is “I felt like at any moment I could be bludgeoned for my sins of being too smart, not wearing expensive designer clothes and hanging out with the uncool people” (39). As you can see, she feels as if she would be bullied for being herself. If she is this scared, you can tell she gets bullied often. To sum up this paragraph, Dana felt scared in the beginning of this short story.

In the middle of this short story, Dana felt more considerate towards the well-liked. “No matter how mean she gets―and Parker can get mean―every time I see her now, I don’t just think that she’s the prettiest girl in school or the richest or the most