Skip to main content

Whom does Leslie find crying in the bathroom? Why was that person crying?

To her great surprise, Leslie finds Janice Avery, the well-known bully, crying in the bathroom. Janice's father beats her, and when Janice finally confided this sad truth in her friends Wilma and Bobby Sue, they revealed her secret to everyone--and now, even the teachers know about Janice's sad situation. This betrayal of trust and the subsequent possible destruction of Janice's tough reputation are what make her cry in the bathroom.


All this happens in Chapter 7, an important turning point in Jess and Leslie's maturity. They'd previously been obsessed with getting revenge on Janice for bothering Jess's little sister. But their childish vengeful attitudes give way to a better understanding of Janice as a person, as someone who is suffering and whose infliction of suffering on others is now easier to understand and excuse.


Reading this story today, we might be confused about why it was a bad thing for the truth to come out about Janice's father abusing her. These days, we understand abuse better, and we encourage each other to speak out and to identify abuse when we suspect it so that adults can intervene and make it stop. (And, so that the abused person can seek treatment to recover, either physically or psychologically, or both.) But during the time when this story takes place, traditions and expectations were different. Here's how Jess explains it:



That was the rule that you never mixed up troubles at home with life at school. When parents were poor or ignorant or mean, or even just didn't believe in having a TV set, it was up to their kids to protect them. By tomorrow every kid and teacher in Lark Creek Elementary would be talking in half snickers about Janice Avery's daddy. It didn't matter if their own fathers were in the state hospital or the federal prison, they hadn't betrayed theirs, and Janice had.



Like Jess explains, then, Janice didn't want her abuse to be revealed. She would have preferred to keep it a secret and maintain her family honor.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more