Who Is The Controversy In Susan Cooper's Muffin

In the short story “Muffin” by Susan Cooper, Daisy the protagonist gets bullied by Fat Alice and her two other girls Maggie and Pat,who are a part of their gang. A character trait that would describe Daisy throughout the book is how she is compassionate. This is because even though she tries to solve the problems by herself when a dog named Muffin helped indicate that she needed help Daisy wanted to give back to the dog. She did this by giving him a piece of meat from her dinner the night before. On page 2 of the story the text stated that “ At dinnertime, Daisy slid a piece of meat from her plate into her handkerchief, even though it was — for once good-tasting meat instead of rubbery gristle, and she hid it in her pocket. On the way home

The short story talks about how Fat Alice is a bully and picks a new person to bully every new term. As the story went on, Susan Cooper described Fat Alice as malicious and petulant girl. The reason that Fat Alice is a malicious girl is because of the ways that she would hurt/bully the kids. The text states that "Shrieking with delight, the other three fell on her, pulling her blond braids, shoving her to the ground so that Fat Alice could grab her hand and scrape the back of it over the gravel-studded asphalt. This was Alice’s favorite torture; "(Copper paragraph 6) This showed that she was excied to be malicious and torture other kids anytime she would get the chance to. Also ever since the War has started, I believe that the War is what is motivating Fat Alice to keep bullying people and hurting them. The text talks about how she always has a new way of hurting people. I think she also gets this from her brother. the text states that, " Shrieking with delight, the other three fell on her, pulling her blond braids, shoving her to the ground so that Fat Alice could grab her hand and scrape the back of it over the gravel-studded asphalt. This was Alice’s favorite torture; she learned it from her brother, who ruled the boys’ end of the playground."(7). This shows that her brother and the war motivated her to keep hurting people and bullying them. I think that living throught World War 2 has shaped Fat Alice into being/ acting like a Nazi more and more as the story goes on. The overall World War 2 is about how Germany (Nazi) would be bullying other coutrys during the War. This ties with the stroy because Fat Alilce is Germany and she is bullying and Hurting Daisy who would be