Written Critique: American Sandwich

Written Critique: American Sandwich

“American Sandwich” is an interesting short story I enjoyed reading. It is mainly about a child’s efforts to convince her mother to buy a particular brand of bread. “American Sandwich” came from the emotional truth of Edite’s experience. It is authentic and thought-provoking.

Edite is a girl who was born in Portugal and came to the United States with her family when she ws seven years old. When she was in the school, lunchtime at school was “a time of mortification”. (Choice, 2003, Burton Goodman, P11). Most of her classmates had beautiful lunches every day of the school week. But Edite’s sandwiches were always monstrous. “Two fat uneven slices of bread that Ma cut every morning from the big crusty leaves she preferred```that she made herself.” “Sometimes the slices of bread had hugh air holes that aallowed the filling to spill out when I tried to raise the sandwich to my lips”. (Choice, 2003, Burton Goodman, P11).Actually, the monstrous sandwiches were hardly for Edite to bite that made her classmates laugh at her. Therefore, she began feeding her sandwich to dog before she got to school and lied to her teacher about her lunch. After learned that Edite hd been discarding her sandwiches, Edite’s Pa and Ma were angry and could not understand her. One day in the bakery, Edite’s mother called her up to the counter and let her to choose a kind of bread she want for her lunch. Her mother’s behavior surprised her. Finally, Edite choose “American Sandwich” and felt happy.

In this story, the use of symbolic and analogy is helpful to strengthen the emotional expression. For example, “he said that looked and tasted like sponges” (Choice, 2003, Burton Goodman, P10).“The French one looked like the softball bat we played with at recess” (Choice, 2003, Burton Goodman, P14).“sponges” vividly describe the conflict between Edite and her father. The use of “softball bat” highlight the hard of French bread and is contrasted with soft American Bread. Also, the author use descriptive passage to describe the character’s inner emotion. For example, “The river was bright green```The tall tall smokestacks of the factories```across the water” (Choice, 2003, Burton Goodman, P15).this description of beautiful and peace environment reflect the happy and satisfaction of the author after she got the bread she desire for a long time. Actually, “American Sandwich” is best described as a symbol of belonging and eating Sunbeam Bread or American sandwich symbolized being an American.