What Is Bullying In The Cat's Eye Essay

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The first journal article provides explanations about how the bullying is presented in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye and how it affects the main character’s to the point she hurt herself to escape from the emotional pain she had to bear. The article shows that the physical and emotional bullying directed towards Elaine comes from the fact that she was different form her other friends, who mostly came from strongly dominant patriarchal families. She dressed and acted differently for her father gave her freedom to do and wear what she wanted. Thus, her supposed-to-be best friends forced her to change because they thought Elaine’s behaviour and appearance were not lady-like. The article explained how this act of phsychological bullying affected …show more content…

She became more introvert and lost her confidence. The bullying caused her to think that she was not enough, that she had to change to be a better person, which then destroy her true self. Jones also highlighted the self-harm issue in her article. Self-harm itself is actually Elaine’s way to take control of herself. She got pressured a lot that she felt lost. She thought she had to do something to make sure that she still had control over her own body. She chose self-harm as a way to escape from her internal pain. She tried to transform her unseen wound into something real by hurting her body so that she could take control of her own pain. This article is useful to help me understand how the the bullying is potrayed and how it affects a person physically and psychologically. Hannah also got bullied for her appearance, although the situation is quite different from Elaine’s. I’d also like to show that bullying doesn’t always mean a person being directly harmed, either physically or psychologically. Being addressed as the girl who got the best ass in school made her feel insecure about her own body. She felt uncomfortable because people now see her from that specific part of her body. It is like her ass defines her as a person. She was not known as Hannah anymore, she was known as Hannah who got the best ass in