Lyddie Charlie Analysis

In Katherine Paterson’s novel Lyddie, 13-year-old girl Lydia Worthen is met with challenges she must face, all while taking care of her mother and siblings, after her father left the small farm in the mountains they call home. Lyddie and her younger brother Charlie always stay at the small farm home when the food supply is low, while their mother and sisters go to an uncle’s home; leaving Lyddie and Charlie to take care of the house and the farm while they are away. One day in late spring, both Lyddie and Charlie are sent away to work, forcibly separating the both of them. After Lyddie has a hard time working in a small tavern, she leaves for Lowell Massachusetts. Lyddie gets a job as a girl working in the textile mills which is dubbed “factory girl”. At the mills, Lyddie befriends another worker who endorses a petition to get fair rights and better working conditions for the girls, and wants Lyddie to sign. This …show more content…
The noise is so loud, it causes her to have a headache. The machines are so fulminating, it makes the workers uncomfortable. During Lyddie’s first day on the job, she is introduced to the machines, and the cacophonous noise in the room as well. Additionally, it states “Within minutes, her head felt like a log being split into splinters. She kept shaking it, as though she could not rid of the noise” (75). This shows that the noise inside the factory causes Lyddie to feel uncomfortable, as well as her fellow workers. Likewise, these noise conditions cannot be reduced or lowered. There isn’t a way for it to get better on its own. The only way for the girls to reduce their headaches from the noise is to work shorter hours, and signing the petition will make it so the girls do not have to endure that noise for so long. The petition makes it so that the girls work only ten hours, and this shorter work period will help the girls to reduce headaches from the tumultuous