Analysis Of Mary Pipher's Saplings In The Storm

In Mary Pipher’s passage, Saplings in The Storm, Pipher claims that young big-hearted girls are changing as they age. She claims that the nature and source of these problems come from the fairy tales, which capture the essence of change, and approval of others. The elements of language that she uses are tone and rhetorical devices. This passage is made in order to appeal to the audience about the situation and to get them interested in the situation. As adolescent girls grow up they start to lose their inner kid that was once inside them. The said to be nature and source of the problem with adolescent girls are the fairy tales that are read to those girls at a young age. “Fairy tales capture the essence of this phenomenon,” (Pipher 12). These fairy tales show adolescent girls that if you go through a life threatening situation your prince charming will come to save you. It also teaches girls that through all of this they transform into “passive and docile creatures” (14-15). These phenomenons bring up the fact that just by them watching this they get a certain perception of a princess and how to be one. Not only does this have an effect on girls so do the approval of others as they understand

Pipher refers to this by referring to the story of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In this story Ophelia starts out innocent without a second thought in her mind but then she meets Hamlet she then “lives only for his approval” (18). She is then is overwhelmed with all this effort that when Hamlet disapproves of her she drowns in a stream. Mary Pipher uses this to help exemplify the fact that theses “destructive forces…affect young women” (16-17). It also represents how young girls begin to live their lives only for the approval of others than to show their true colors. This is exactly what Mary Pipher is trying to get through to the