Discussion Forum #5 Jessica Whitney
Keyser states that Burnett “seems to have intended to evoke sympathy for both Mary and Colin. Give some examples of when you felt sympathetic for Mary and/or Colin, and explain how the author made you feel/portrayed this emotion. Also think about why she may have wanted you to feel this way about each character.
In my opinion there were several part in the book that made me feel sympathetic for the character of Mary Lennox. During her introduction as a character of the story, the author provides the audience with some background information of the Mary Lennox, where she points out “Her father had held a position under the English Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her mother had been a great beauty who
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This feeling of sympathy is portrayed by this passage because we see how Mary’s mother did not want her at all and although Mary got sick, the only thing that Mary’s mother was most concerned about is not letting anyone know she had a daughter. On page nine of the book, we are able to see that due to the outbreak of cholera, Mary looses the only person who cared for her which was her Ayah. Although, Mary did not develop any affectionate feelings towards her Ayah, we are able to see that after her Ayah dies, Mary is left behind with no one to take care of her. The author made me feel sympathetic towards the character because during the cholera outbreak Mary was extremely neglected up to point where she accidentally got drunk by drinking wine. “It was in that strange and sudden way that Mary found out that she had neither father nor mother left, that they had died and been carried away in the night, and that the few native servants who had not died also left the house as quickly as they could get out of it, none of them remembering that there was Missie Sahib.” (pg.11) From this passage the author