Summary Of Brownies By Zz Packer

In the short story “Brownies,” ZZ Packer develops a theme of “there is often more to something than what meets the eye” by making it so that although there was a predominant leader of the Brownie troop, Laurel acted as the true leader and was not afraid to go against the crowd. When the Brownies were putting their plan against the Troop 909 girls into action, Daphne decides to stay behind, and Laurel was “gonna stay, too” (Packer). Despite the fact that every girl in the troop but one was going, Laurel chose not to follow the crowd and tag along just for the sake of fitting in, which takes courage to do, showing that she is more of a leader than a follower. Later in the story, the girls were outside, waiting for their cue to burst into the bathroom. After a couple minutes of waiting and hearing nothing, they begin to argue about whether or not they should head in, and the

The main conflict in “Brownies” started when “Arnetta said she’d heard one of the Troop 909 girls call Daphne a ******” and wanted to get revenge (Packer). No one else could confirm that Arnetta’s accusation was true, and when Arnetta tried to get confirmation from Daphne, all she did was shrug. Even though there was no evidence that a girl had actually called Daphne the derogatory term, everyone joined in on the plan to get revenge, trusting Arnetta’s words. They eventually confronted the Troop 909 girls, but they quickly learned that some of the girls were echolalic, meaning “they will say whatever they hear, like an echo,” and that even if one of the girls did say the word, it was unintentional. The Brownies had created an elaborate plan to get revenge because of one girl’s words, only to find out that the situation was not what they had imagined it to be, therefore developing the theme that “There is often more to something than what meets the