Geraldine Crawford
Engwr 301
Professor Collins
Feb. 20, 2013 A Sister’s Obligation I want to show how well intentioned acts of love and devotion can go awry and create a less than desirable outcome than planned. The story of the sister’s starts out in present time with an incident that creates the visual ground work for us of the character in the story. The character is expressing her thoughts and fears for what she is seeing and hearing while her sister and she are alone at night in the family restaurant that leads her to her actions of stabbing a man who has gotten out of control and grabbed sister Sourdi. The character uses flashback to give us the connection we need to understand what has happened in the past while leaving their country to a new country and how they end up where they are, working with an Uncle in a family run restaurant. The character wants us to understand about the obligation she feels toward her sister and how it came about, that would be the story of their walk through a minefield. Our character Nea appears to be a static character throughout the story, but could also be shown as a foil character to sister Sourdi, by revealing her qualities of being able to bare things and appear ok with the events that have happened to her. Things that Nea is not in her frame of mind able to do. Nea is hanging onto a self- imposed obligation to her older sister in response to the story she has heard. Their closeness has them plan and dream of what they want to do when Sourdi turns eighteen. Nea continues through the story to go over and reflect on those dreams of travel and how they plan to support themselves. . Being a child and as close as she felt to Sourdi was hanging onto the words like a promise of what life was going to be like. Nea even describes her sister’s boyfriend Duke as being, “a bookmark holding a certain space in her life until it was time for her to move on.” (72) It shows that she is still wrapped in their dreams and plans of the future. The story’s tone is of love, caring and protection of a loved one, which most readers can relate to and connect with. The tone shows the thoughts and feelings of life and events through the eyes of youth, and how emotional they are with family members they have a strong bond or love for. Feeling the need to protect her older sister, Nea over reacts to situations as if she doesn’t understand that Sourdi is older and capable of taking care of herself. There was so much Nea read into her sister’s reactions or lack of reactions. Not realizing that she’s projecting her own thoughts onto what Sourdi should be feeling or thinking, which leads to her bizarre behavior of protecting and in her words “saving Sourdi.” It also shows how immature her thinking is, and could have had many negative effects on her and the family. The family isn’t aware of how she feels including the sister, and they wonder what is wrong with her. Nea isn’t aware of arranged marriages and is totally oblivious to what is occurring when her Uncle has arranged for a meeting between Sourdi and his older friend. The character has described it as, “the beginning of the end. I should have fought harder then.” (75) She seemed surprised about the wedding. She even states he was too old for her sister of eighteen. The irony used in the story shows us how things aren’t as they appear to be, and how someone may jump to conclusions that are totally unfounded. There is also a lesson to be learned on how others can convince innocent people of false beliefs by giving their interpretation of a situation based on what they heard or didn’t hear by filling in the blanks. An example of this was getting Duke an ex-boyfriend convinced that Sourdi was in an abusive marriage and a promise from him to help her get the sister out of it, which leads to the husband getting punched. An embarrassment to Nea because she filled in the blanks