The Red Ribbon And Pledge Day By Alex Irvine

“The Red Ribbon” by Aimee Bender and “Pledge Day” by Alex Irvine are both fiction stories following the life of an average loving couple, Janet and Daniel, and then a young boy named Luke. Both groups encounter challenges through their relationships as they are forced to challenge their identities through money and envy. Aimee Bender and Alex Irvine perfectly encapsulate the impacts these challenges had on everyone. “The Red Ribbon” and “The Pledge Day” describe how characters like Janet and Luke change their identities in search for satisfying versions of themselves.

“Red Ribbon” by Aimee Bender showcases many ideas about how money allows desperate people to change themselves into someone who makes them feel more safe, confident and

The main character, Luke, lives in a world where kids have chips inserted into their arms at a young age. These chips allow for parents to track everything about their children, including emotions and location. Once they reach a certain age, they choose a bank and an adult chip is then inserted. We begin the story with Luke being very sure of where he would go in life, his parents, specifically his father, had already created this plan for him. His father is far into the socialization of their world, his focus is based on what others think of Luke and if he follows in his father’s footsteps or not. His father’s “performative worry about his mom is just a way for Luke’s dad to rope her into his emotional arcology of self-doubt, hunger for validation, generally what you call a martyr complex” (Irvine, 6). His father uses these emotional manipulation tactics to ensure his family remains in the cage he has spent years building. All the money Luke’s father has, makes him stray away from the life he knew by trying to find a new identity in a different group of people. While playing soccer in his supervised, approved soccer park, he thinks about the kids in the other soccer park who don’t have these same standards. “Luke doesn’t say anything, but he pokes at the little lump in the back of his arm where his KidChip nestles between deltoid and triceps. He wants to play with those kids, but he also wants to be them. He wants to be anything but already decided” (Irvine, 3 - 4). Luke envies these kids who have a sense of freedom that Luke doesn't have, he wants to live their life, where their entire life isn’t already decided and where their identity would be created by themselves and not by their father. These differences are created by money, the kids who have freedom of identity don’t have as much money or opportunity as Luke.