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Short Story: Clara's Day By Penelope Lively

955 Words4 Pages

The development a child goes through throughout their adolescence can be a tough journey if they have not learned how to behave or how to handle the things that are coming their way. We see an example of this in the short story “Clara’s Day” written by Penelope Lively in 1986, where the protagonist, Clara, find it hard to mature and to express herself due to loneliness, lack of attention and missing knowledge.
The protagonist, Clara, is a 15-year-old girl in the middle of her adolescence, who, despite her lack of knowledge of growing up, is trying to figure out the right way to do it. Clara has very few friends, no boyfriend, her parents are divorced and she barely talks to her mother. The lack of companionship in Clara’s life is what makes her lonely and crave for any kind of attention she can possibly get, and that is what makes her walk around the school completely naked.
After her act at school, Clara was sent to the Head’s study. The Head seems like the caring mother that Clara does not have at home. She seems very interested in Clara, and in the reason why Clara behaved the way that she did. However, Clara does not open up to the Head, even though she really tries to have an honest, open conversation with her. As Clara is sitting in the Head’s office, she agrees when the Head asked her if she knew that she would draw attention from her act, “Well, I would, wouldn’t I? Doing a think like that. I mean - you’d be bound to” (p.3. l. 67.) She said, quickly changing it to “I

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