Lourdes: Character Analysis

When I was in junior high school, I had a friend name Lourdes. Lourdes was a smart young girl who came from a respectable family. She was the oldest of three children (one girl two boys) who lived in well to do, middle-class neighborhood with her parents. She was raised with values that consisted of obeying your parents, no drinking, no smoking, respect adults and authority, and doing well in school. She too embraced those values and was always well dressed, well mannered, spoke proper English, and showed the utmost respect to everyone. When Lourdes finished junior high school, she convinced her parents to allow her to move in with her aunt, who lived in the inner city, in order to attend public school. She lived with her aunt Monday through Friday and returned home on the weekends. When she first came to school, I was her only friend. Wanting to more friends and also fit in, Lourdes decided to change her whole persona. So …show more content…
Having the ability to codeswitch between her middle-class upbringing and the exciting life of a lower-class environment, Lourdes felt that she was getting the best of both worlds. In Lourdes’s case, codeswitching helped her to attain the status of being the unruly teen she aspired to be. After a while of dealing with her new persona, and since I was never a fan of unruly children, that was the end of our friendship. Unfortunately for her, about a year later someone in school learned the truth about her and Lourdes was ostracized for being someone she wasn’t, and the kids who were once her friends, turned on her because they felt that she was quote, unquote “pretending to be something she wasn’t.” Needless to say, that was the end of her codeswitching and she eventually reverted back to her middle-class lifestyle, in her middle-class