The Metaphor - Character Sketch

The Metaphor

Character Sketch

In the story "The Metaphor" by Budge Wilson, Miss Hancock is an English teacher whose passion and love for literature inspires her junior high students, but she becomes sad and disappointed when the teenagers at her new job at a high school ridicule her. Miss Hancock is a special teacher who dresses exotically: "she was fond of peasant blouses encrusted with embroidery, from which loose threads invariably dangled" (65). Additionally, her face is amazing: "she was fond of luminous frosted lipsticks-in hot pink or something closer to purple or magenta" (65). The students are mesmerized by her appearance and understand that she is a good teacher: "She has that gift of making most of us want to write, to communicate, to make a blank sheet of paper into a beautiful or at least an interesting thing" (66). As a result, her grade seven students love her. They think "We were as drugged by words as some children are by electronic games" (66).

Afterward, "Miss Hancock's marked success with 15 years of grade seven students had finally transported her to high places" (76). When she get a job teaching English in a high school she sincerely expects" to sample the gift of a group of other order and more perceptive minds" (76). Unfortunately, her new students never give her a chance: "Guffaws sprang up here and there throughout the room. Gladys Simpson whispered something behind her hand to the girl beside her, and then broke into fits of giggles" (77). Furthermore, even her former student, Charlotte, does not want talk to her either. All these events make Miss Hancock very disappointed. Poor Miss Hancock" entered that room white with tension and left it defeated" (78) everyday. At last, Miss Hancock feelings of hopelessness and cause her kill herself by walking