The Mutant By Joyce Carol Oates Analysis

After surviving a tragic moments in one’s life; one can be forever altered. Their shell of their former self is gone with that moment, and it can never be recovered. The only thing they can do is pick up the pieces and resume life. This is what happened to the girl in the story “The Mutants” by Joyce Carol Oates. The girl has changed, and her cloak of innocence has forever been removed. At the beginning of the story, the girl was this dreamy, beautiful, innocent person that had this special aura around her that caused everyone to like. She was just a virtuous woman in the world, but things would change in a very short amount of time for her. She had a cloak of Athena that made it seem like the world couldn’t touch her. This wouldn’t last much longer. When the first crash happened. She immediately went into shock; the only thing that she could think of is to go run home. The only place that she felt she was safe from whatever was happening outside. Even when she got inside, she was still spooked by the crash and was still covered in the ashes of the crash. She would stay inside for a long time refusing to go out and face whatever was going on in the outside world. After a couple of hours she decided to take a shower and got all the ash and dust and grime off of her. When she looked at herself in the mirror after the shower she said that …show more content…
A similar thing happened to Jesse in the Book Wonderland. In the book, Jesse suffers from the tragic experience of having his entire family killed by his dad, and then having his dad try and kill Jesse before he killed himself. Jesse went from a young kid to having to fight for his life in a split second. Jesse lost his childhood because of this; he could never go back to his boyhood. He was just forced to grow up so fast that it caused him to lose a little of his old self in the process which he never got