Day Of The Butterfly By Alice Munro Analysis

The story “Day of the Butterfly” by Alice Munro is a coming of age story between two girls. In the story the focus is on acceptance and rejection of our peers. Myra and her little brother Jimmy are the rejects of a small town in Ontario, Canada and are judged based on their looks and actions by the other kids. One of the kids is Helen but she decides to be nice to Myra and share her Cracker Jack with her one morning on the way to school. Suddenly Myra quit going to school, Gladys Healey claims she’s sick with Leukemia. Now during the story Helen shows acceptance towards Myra when they begin to walk to school together and talk more. Helen begins to understand the life that Myra lives everyday she begins to care. I have been in Helen shoes where I
“But I am no good at spelling,” said Myra. “I make the most mistakes, I’ll fail maybe.” In this I detected a lack of self-confidence which relates to how easily Myra experiences rejection. With all the cruelty her peers have thrown at her it is starting to project on how she sees herself. At the beginning of the story Miss Darling is asking the other girls what they would do in Myra’s shoes how would they feel. “Do you think she looks very happy standing back there? Do you think you would be very happy, if you were left back there?” In this situation Miss Darling is showing the other kids how to empathize Myra. Throughout this short story I learned that empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing. Empathy with others happen when we have successfully shed all preconceived ideas and judgments about them. If I could rename “Day of the Butterfly” I would name it Myra’s secret. I thought of it since nobody really knew of her disease, if she was going to die, and because of how little she valued herself she probably thought nobody would care thus making it a