April 26, 2014
In “The School Days of Indian Girl,” Zitkala-Sa, a writer and an activist for Native American rights, exhibits her personal experience of encountering white American people, who tried hard and put a great deal amount of effort in order to insert and adapt Native American people into their world. Zitkala-Sa utilizes a chronological structure, divided into subtitled sections, to display how her perspective and feeling was breeding during her journey toward the White people. Besides conveying her experience, the structure makes Zitkala-Sa's article well organized and much understandable.
Zitkala-Sa divides her article into three sections, each of which has been subtitled. In the first section, which is subtitled "The Land of Red Apples," Zitkala-Sa starts talking about how she and seven of her Native Americans friends were taken to be educated in an English-only mission boarding school. As an extraordinary trip that she had never been before, she describes the worries that she had and the strict rules that she must have followed. In the second section, which its subtitle is "The Cutting of My Long Hair," Zitkala-Sa illustrates some of her people's traditions and how they conflicted with some of her new school's rules, such as wearing fitted clothes and cutting her long hair. In the last section, called "The Snow Episode," Zitkala-Sa describes how she eventually improved her English which made her be able to express herself in what she called "broken English." Consequently, she decided to take a vengeance upon the people who scared and punished her unjustifiably.
In this article, Zitkala-Sa paints the scenes with her words in subtitled sections, organized chronologically. The division of the article into sections may simplify understanding the series of the actions and give the reader time to think. Furthermore, choosing motivating subtitles makes the reader predict the main idea of each section and be curies about what is coming after. As an opening, in the first section, Zitkala-Sa recites her story starting from her Indian reservation, South Dakota, until she arrived to the new school. She names this section "The Land of Red Apples," and she gives a clue about why this section is called "The Land of Red Apples" when she says, "We had been very impatient to start on our journey to the Red Apple Country, which, we were told, lay a little beyond the great circular horizon of the Western prairie." Likewise, in the second section which is under the name "The Cutting of My long Hair," she continuously recites what happened after she and her friends arrived to the school. She uses an enthusiastic subtitle which shows clearly that there is something unusual had happened to herself personally, using the preference pronoun "My". Finally, in the last section which is called "The Snow Episode," Zitkala-Sa describes the progress of her personality and knowledge improvement. In addition, she describes the difficult time that she encountered during her school's days. Zitkala-Sa relates the name of this section with the meaning of encountering difficulties. Obviously, she affirms that when she says, "During the first two or three seasons misunderstandings as ridiculous as this one of the snow episodes frequently took place, bringing unjustifiable frights and punishments into our little lives."
In general, Zitkala-Sa recites her personal story to point out the difficulties that Native American has faced because of the White American in order to be absorbed into white Americans' environment. She organizes her article chronologically, since she was in her peaceful reservation until she decided to seek a vengeance upon the white American people after her unpleased experience. Zitkala-Sa utilizes subtitled sections for two main reasons. First, the subtitles facilitate the reader to take a pause and understanding the series of the actions. Second, the subtitles motive the reader to be curious and interested in completing reading the section. This kind of articles may be an useful tool for those who want to learn more about Native American through a realistic story.