Tone: Encouraging, endearing

Characters: Marguerite, Mrs. Bertha Flowers, Momma

Mrs. Flowers helps significantly develop Marguerite's characteristics by helping her find her own words and making her feel more comfortable talking around other people.

Setting: Stamps, Arkansas, 1930s. The time period of the Civil Rights movement influenced Marguerite's mindset and promoted negative thoughts about her race.

Reflection: The narrator learns that she should be braver when talking to others and that she should value different types of knowledge, not just through words. "'Yes, ma'am,' It was the least I could do, but it was the most also" (Angelou 245). By finally speaking to Mrs. Flowers, she learns to express her thoughts through words.

Noteworthy Feature:

"She acted just as refined as whitefolks in the movies and books and she was more beautiful, for none of them could have come near that warm color without looking gray by comparison" (Angelou). This figurative language of comparing Mrs. Flower's refined appearance to others helped Marguerite feel more confident in herself and her race.

Tone: Insecure

Characters: Narrator, mother, grandmother. The protagonist's mother develops the belief in the protagonist that she is plain and not beautiful. But, she reassures her daughter that being beautiful isn't necessarily good.

Setting: Mid 60's California. The time period of this story contributes to the growth of the narrator and her mother, and how her mother still thinks of herself as pretty even with old age.

Reflection: "Since my mother died, I find myself looking into the mirror more often than I did when I was twelve... Why do I long to look like my mother?" (Tan). This quote at the end of the story shows how the narrator discovers her own true beauty, and not what she was led to believe in her childhood.

Noteworthy Feature: The dialogue in the story between the mother and the narrator always revolved around looks, and how the mother was pretty and the narrator was plain looking.

Tone: Overwhelmed, acceptance

Characters: Saeed, Mom, Rob. The mom is a significant character, first developing concerns and worries for her son, and later accepting her son coming out as gay, changing Saeed's viewpoint on himself.

Setting: The setting is Saeed's college campus. This helps develop the plot, because it sets up a barrier between Saeed and his mother, being only able to communicate through phone. Communicating only through a phone leads to miscommunication and anxiety within Saeed.

Reflection: Saeed realizes that his being gay wasn't the problem, but rather the fact that he had tried to hide it. "In retrospect, I think I didn't feel as if a burden had been lifted because my being gay was never actually the burden" (Jones).

Noteworthy Feature: The dialogue between Saeed and his mother is significant to the text because it helps relieve the concerns and anxiety Saeed had before coming out as gay to his mother.

Tone: Forgiveness, embarrassment

Characters: Narrator, narrator's friend, airline official. The narrator's friend helps relieve the narrator's concerns about being a nuisance or being apathetic.

Setting: Japan, modern day. The narrator of the story is a foreigner from America who decided to visit Japan. This new setting brings anxiety and distress to the narrator but later helps teach her to be forgiving of others.

Reflection: At the end of the story, the narrator learns to thoroughly forgive others because everyone makes mistakes. "'You have no idea' I told him, 'how thoroughly I forgive you'" (Kingsley).

Noteworthy feature: The dialogue between the protagonist and the citizens in Japan develops the idea that the narrator made a lot of mistakes and is willing to correct them, but also forgive others for making mistakes, too.