Preciousness is a story that goes beyond the struggles of a teen-aged girl’s
life, but it also portrays themes of basic life. Themes like, “letting go”
and “cultural differences” apply to almost all people in one way or another.
For that reason, Preciousness is not just a story about a young girl’s life,
but it’s a story about all of our lives. Throughout the story, the reader is
presented with a series of conflicts the girl faces. Her main problem was that
she had a problem with men and boys. She felt that they were evil and only
wanted one thing. I feel that she lived in her own world, where she made all the
rules. “...she swallowed her coffee which the maid, scratching herself in the
gloom of the kitchen, had reheated. She scarcely touched the bread which the
butter failed to soften.”1 This was extremely unhealthy for her, physically
and mentally. Not eating healthily will make a person weak and can lead to many
diseases. She did this to have men and boys avoid her, which was also unhealthy.
Man or woman, one cannot avoid life and its people. I don’t feel it is
possible to be psychologically fit if a person cannot interact with a certain
group because of a fear they have. Being scared of a certain person in that
group is normal, but the entire group is a bit extreme. Life is a learning
experience, but you can’t fully experience life if you avoid certain things in
it. One has to face reality at some point in life, it can be done the easy way,
by accepting reality, or done the hard way, by denying the truth. The main
character of the story decided that it would be better if she did things the
hard way. The rising action, when the two boys were approaching here on an early
morning, lead to a major problem. At the climax, the two boys groped the girl.
At that moment, her bubble, malignantly protecting her from the world of
reality, exploded. The destruction of her bubble led to an amazing revelation
that changed her life. She was no longer a girl, but a young woman. I feel that
this was when she started accepting the truth about life and about whom she had
become. She then understood that you couldn’t avoid life. I think that there
was more than one main theme in this story. Prejudice, fear, and hate are three
themes that can be closely linked together. These factors play a large role in
the story and in our lives. Like the girl in the story, we tend to make
assumptions about other people before we actually know it’s true. The main
character assumes that all men and boys want that one thing. She feels that it
is her place to classify other people, in this case, men. “Afraid they would
“say something to her,” would look her up and down.”2 Even though the men
didn’t care about her, she still had a fear of them. People fear what they
don’t understand and have no control over. The girl had no control over the
men and boys, so she feared what they might say or do to her. She is fearful of
putting trust into men, scared of how they might take advantage of that trust.
As the days built up, she developed a hatred of men. She knew that they
“knew.” I believe that neither side really knew anything truly significant
about each other. The girl couldn’t have known what the men knew and what they
were thinking. The men probably didn’t know much about the girl either. I
think that the girl surrounded herself in a bubble that was much worse than
reality. Repression was also a very considerable theme. For the whole time, she
repressed her true self. She tried to hide what she was becoming, which was a
woman. She had to learn to let go of her childhood and start accepting the
responsibilities of being older and more mature. This is something everyone has
either gone through, is going through, or will go through in life. It’s a
force of nature, like a hurricane or earthquake. It happens when it wants to,
all we can do is try to be as prepared for it as possible. There is nothing that
can hold it back. This force will consume the old personality and bring out a
new, more experienced personality. It’s part of the life process and everyone
has their turn. “Until, just as a person grows fat, she ceased, without
knowing through which process, to be precious.”3 This quote shows that she had
changed. Sometimes in life, we don’t realize we are changing, until the
changing process is all done. The girl had changed, but she didn’t want to
face the realization of it, so she never realized that she had changed. The
quote, “I need some new shoes!” showed that she had finally accepted her
womanhood. She admitted that her shoes made too much noise and a woman can’t
where those kind of shoes. Preciousness is a story about life. Not just the
girl’s life, but also all of our lives in general. Everyone, at some point in
life, has felt uneasy about being around certain people. We all have changed
from a carefree child to an adult who has many responsibilities. We all carried
a precious jewel of innocence as a child, but some of us have carelessly given
them away or had it taken away. Prejudice, fear, and hate are factors in life
that the majority of people have to face and overcome. The fact that the author
didn’t give the girl a name made it obvious that the girl’s problems could
be applied to the reader, whether they are male or female.