Red Dress Alice Munro Analysis

An individual’s perspective on the world is influenced by other people because everyone sees the world in a different way which to them is considered the right way and so they want other people to see it in the same way. The short story Red Dress – 1946 by Alice Munro is a story that focuses on a teenage girl and her problems about prom, her mother and being popular. In the beginning of the story the readers can tell straight away that the protagonist’s goal is to be popular and fit in with her peers and while doing this she looks at the world with three perspectives which she took on from three different people, her mothers, her best friend Lonnie’s and Mary Fortune’s. When the story first begins we get to know a little about the protagonist and her best friend, Lonnie. Lonnie is the type of girl who likes getting attention from boys and she gets this because she is pretty and popular and the protagonist wishes she was like Lonnie, “I wished I was like Lonnie, light-boned, pale and thin, she had been a Blue Baby.” (pg. 9, paragraph 4). The protagonist at …show more content…
From the beginning of the story the protagonist didn’t appreciate her mother as much as she should’ve. As the protagonist left for the prom her mother yelled out, “Au reservoir!” (pg. 13, paragraph 2). This goodbye is the one that Lonnie and the protagonist use and when the protagonist’s mother used it the protagonist didn’t like it and felt as if she was trying to fit in with her and Lonnie. By the end of the story we can see that the protagonist starts seeing the world from her mother’s perspective and starts understanding her mother more, “But when I saw the waiting kitchen, and my mother in her faded, fuzzy Paisley kimono, with her sleepy but doggedly expectant face, I understood what a mysterious and oppressive obligation I had, to be happy, and how I had almost failed it,” (pg. 19, paragraph