I read the novel called “The Hundred Dresses” in humanities class at school. The author of the novel uses much symbolism. Also, the author repeats several words and passages to highlight it. The choice of the words also helps to set the mood of the event. There are sentence like “Peggy and the girls were having fun with Wanda, but they had to go because they were late to school.” The girls tell themselves that they are “having fun with Wanda”, but in reality, they are “making fun of” Wanda. As I read the novel again, I recognized new important hidden meanings and more symbols. The novel itself gave me an important lesson, but some passages also made me sink into deep thoughts.
The author uses many different colors to describe things or set the mood in the story. I drew a large mind map of each color: red, green, yellow, blue. I wrote everything that came up in my mind when I see each colors. I thought about an apple when I thought about red. Apple reminded me about ‘Snow White’s red toxic apple which the witch gave to her’ and ’Adam and Eve’s apple which the god told them to never eat it’. Red represented evil, cruelty, and temptation. In the story, the color red also stands for bad luck, because Wanda stops coming to school when Cecile wore her red dress to school. I found out that I listed words that were related to life and death on the mind map about green. Wanda gave the green dress with red trimmings drawing to Peggy. Peggy is a girl who actually helps people if they are in trouble. However, she manages to “have fun with Wanda” which means she enjoys making fun of Wanda. She is a helpful person to people, except for Wanda. That was the reason why Wanda gave her the green dress with red trimming drawing. In the novel, the author also uses lots of blues. Bright blue sky, Wanda always wear her faded blue dress, like a blue ocean. Wanda gave Maddie her sky blue dress drawing. According to my mind map, blue is peace, purity, sadness, and timidity. It perfectly matches with Wanda’s personality, and how Maddie feels for Wanda and how she remembers her.
The word “dress” keeps repeating through the novel. The “dress” is the thing all the girls are obsessed with. They talk delightedly about their dresses. It shows their style and who they are, but most strikingly, it shows their wealth. I drew a social hierarchy with the color of the dress in the novel. The crimson and red dress forms the top. Those are the dresses the girls like Cecile and Peggy wear. Blue forms the bottom part of the hierarchy. Wanda only has one faded blue dress in her closet. Wanda also gave Maddie her sky blue dress drawing. They are both poor. In the book, Maddie talks about “The Dresses Game” Peggy and her friends used to play with Wanda. Wanda barely says anything except when she talks about her hundred dresses. Wanda always says there are hundred dresses all lined up in her closet. Nobody, even Maddie did not believe her and Peggy made fun of her and her hundred dresses. The hundred dresses are Wanda herself, but it also represents the people she loves. Wanda drew Peggy and Maddie wearing one of her hundred dresses.
This novel is very detailed, specifically written. At first, I thought Wanda was not good at English because the construction of her sentences were unorganized and because of the fact she is a foreigner. But few months later, after she moves to another school, I found out that her English improved a lot by the letter she sent to her previous class. I inferred that her English skills were better than I thought before, but she is just too shy and timid that she could not speak up towards Peggy.
In this novel, there is a passage, ‘Peggy is a tender-hearted girl. She never thought about herself being cruel.’ The narrator in this story was the author himself. Beyond this point of the story, he emphasized the fact that Peggy and her friends use to play Hundred Dresses Game on Wanda. But Peggy always forgets what she did to Wanda as the school begins. This passage shows that she is not feeling guilty even when she does a cruel thing to Wanda. In this book, he gave us a lesson, “never bully a friend like Peggy does”, but why did the author write a passage, “Peggy has a soft heart”? These two passages are contrasting. What I think is that Peggy is self-rationalizing herself. Perhaps it is true that Peggie is a kind-hearted girl. However, she makes herself think that it is okay to bully Wanda because she is telling a lie to her. Even though she rationalizes herself, there is some point in the novel that shows Peggy actually cares about Wanda and is afraid of what she did to Wanda. When Wanda gave her the drawing, Peggy carries the drawing home “carefully” and places it upside down on her bed. It shows that she is really caring about her, but she is afraid to face her problem directly.
What I learned in this novel was that annotating is very important, and that readers should be able to spot the details if you read books carefully. In addition, the readers of all books have to think about the author’s message.
