Ranch Girl Analysis

Everyone is born into this world with a set of characteristics, proclivities, and personalities, simply, an identity. When we look in the mirror, we have a set of beliefs about ourselves that makes up our self -consciousnessness-this is what makes us human, being self-conscious. We go about our lives believing what we are told based on what our culture deems to be the right way to live. There are two things that seem to keep us from living the way we are supposed to be, or so it seems-time and tradition. It is almost as if “progress” is inhibited by time and tradition. Time is simply the modern invention we have devised to schedule our life. It puts parameters on our daily living. Tradition is what has been imprinted on us by our
In “Ranch Girl”, two of the main characters’ lives exemplify the strong grip tradition has on keeping people exactly where they are and halting progression. The main character, namely, the Ranch Girl herself explains how “if you’re white, and you’re not rich or poor but somewhere in the middle, it’s hard to have worse luck than to be born a girl on a ranch”(173). In her society, it is simply not the best thing in the world to be a ranch girl, but there doesn’t seem to be any alternative option, or so she thinks. Being “the foreman’s daughter”(173), she grew up helping her dad on “Ted Haskell’s Running-H cattle ranch”(173). She was educated on everything there is to know about cattle ranching. Now, this would be tortuous for any teenage girl, or basically for any girl, however, the best part about working for Ted Haskell was that his daughter, Carla, became best friends with the ranch girl. The two would do normal girl things together and sometimes they would go to “the Hill”, which is the “park where everyone stands and talks after they get bored driving their cars in circles on the drag”(173). It is completely pitiful that driving cars in a circle was their form of entertainment. As the ranch girl matures into a young woman the trapped feeling she gets being coined as a “Ranch Girl” and all that entails intensifies-she tries to fight these feelings. As any normal
The reason progress doesn’t occur is partly because of these two things, however, the reasoning can be taken one step further. The reason we have time as we know it and tradition is because we are human. Tradition encapsulates the “this is how we do it” mantra-this can be accounted for in the form of religion and other belief systems. Time is just a medium that people use to control their out of control lives and it is quite successful in doing so. Tradition, however, controls people more. Tradition says it is ok to tell white lies, mock homosexuals, and make sure the tree that we bring into our house which covers our presents is taken care of. Both of these literature pieces quantify humanity. Human nature fills the essence of these stories and time and tradition are just part of our human living system. Unfortunately, there are never any fulfilling answers to these issues, at least not in these stories. The people are always left stuck or confused, looking for answers. The answers aren’t found in tradition and time keeps us so anxious and preoccupied that we can’t even begin to look for truth. The first step in finding the truth is understanding who the people are in these stories as well as the authors-humans. The description of how the human race started is found in Genesis, which is where the truth