Barbie Doll By Marge Pierce And Paul Zimmer

I’m pretty sure that most of us would agree that the first moment in our lives in which start exploring the outside world, is when we start going to school. Schools are our children’s first contact with society, and it makes sense that their firsts doubts, insecurities, and problems are in their totality related to the school environment that not only teachers but also students create for each individual. Each person participating in any school-related activity is responsible for providing a safe, fair, and enjoyable environment for everyone. Problems like bullying or abuse of power have been criticized for decades in newspapers, internet, television, and literature is not the exception. We clearly see an example of this in the poems “Barbie Doll” and “Zimmer in grade school” by Marge Pierce and Paul Zimmer
In both poems, the author counts a story in which the school environment that the protagonist experienced, played an important role in their emotional life, and it’s important to remember that none of these stories have a happy ending. Thought their poems, Pierce and Zimmer provide indirect criticism of the educational environment in our schools, by remarking how harmful and traumatic a bad environment can be and how it can permanently affect the life of an individual.
In the first stanza of “Barbie Doll”, Marge Pierce introduce the protagonist of the story by saying how normal and common this “girlchild” was at the moment she was born (1-4). Suddenly, everything changes the moment she hits puberty. Our protagonist starts being bullied at school, and Pierce is very explicit in the way she describes how other kids made fun of her, “You have a great big nose and fat legs” (5-6). She was a happy normal girl that played with dolls and miniature stoves, but her life completely changed when she experienced this inappropriate behavior from her classmates. In the second Stanza, the author remarks the good qualities of