(relying on the text) Working with only the first 25 pages of the novel, offer a very preliminary character analysis of Frankie; pick out two descriptive moments from McCullers’ prose that help you say something specific about Frankie as a character. Use textual evidence as a part of your brief reflection. 
(relying on your intuition) Next, boldly assign two adjectives that describe the young girl McCullers introduces in the first 25 pages. Make sure that none of your classmates have used your two “Frankie adjectives” and avoid using McCullers’ words for this part of the exercise. Be creative with your Frankie terms.
1. “It happened that green and crazy summer…for a long time she had not been a member. She belonged to no club and was a member of nothing in the world. Frankie had become an unjoined person who hung around in doorways, and she was afraid”(McCullers, 3). Frankie has reached a transition period in her life where she is constantly yearning for something more in life. She wants to move forward and away from childhood, though she is scared to take the leap. ‘Hanging around in doorways,’ Frankie is scared to enter the room(her future) back is not going to step backwards. She has difficulty enjoying her summer as she is simply not amused with the normal things anymore(such as hanging out with John Henry and playing cards). “Frankie was too tall to walk beneath the arbor as she had always done before”(McCullers, 8). This is a seemingly simple statement that describes so much of what Frankie is currently experiencing. She is is the midst of a growth spurt and unable to do the things she knows, while, not knowing how to take the big step and move forward.
2. ‘Isolated’ and ‘Anxious.’ Frankie often talks about how she feels trapped–or isolated in her current situation. “I’ve been ready to leave this town so long”(McCullers, 7). This statement clearly illustrates Frankie’s anxiousness to leave town and move forward in life, as well as her feeling of isolation. She continues as she describes her distain for the kitchen and the pictures all over the walls, as well as showing her boredom with things such as the card game she ‘plays'(or puts down random cards) with Berenice and John Henry. She also talks about being sick of dealing with John Henry’s six-year-old immaturity, then, asks him to come spend the night, illustrating some form of boredom. Portraying that she may be attempting to pass the time until she can leave for the wedding–one which she hope to never return from.
Frankie is lonely, and feels lost. She is changing into a woman, and feels trapped in her tiny house, her tiny town, her tiny life. She doesn’t know how to treat people. The two people she’s closest to, Berenice and John Henry, she treats poorly.
Two moments that highlight Frankie’s plight are:
1.) “To me it is the irony of fate, (pg. 14)†Frankie tells John Henry, while they watch several moths bang against and cling to the window screen. These moths represent Frankie in many ways, how she conversely clings to/pushes away both Berenice and John Henry. The visual of the moths “spreading their wings†is symbolic of change, of an adolescent blossoming, coming into their own, etc. The moths “clinging†to the screen is revealing, in how Frankie clings to the idea of her brothers wedding as her possible great escape. She says they could “fly anywhere. Yet they keep hanging around the windows of this house.†This is revealing of Frankie’s conception of herself, as seen through the eyes of Berenice, always hanging around the house.
2.) “Then she breathed deeply…she was not so much afraid (pg. 15).†Here, Frankie’s actions and McCuller’s prose tell us that Frankie is very much on the edge of becoming a young woman, but is also still a scared, little girl who’s afraid of sleeping alone, and she doesn’t appear to have very much support or love in her life.
Frankie is bored and bright.
She imagines her way out of her boredom through her imagination and her will.
It appears that this often gets her into trouble, but also seems to make for an intriguing narrative.
1. “Frankie sat up, licked the tears from around her mouth, and wiped off her face with her shirttail. She sat still, her nose widened, smelling herself. Then she went to her suitcase and took out a bottle of Sweet Serenade. She rubbed some on the top of her head and poured some more down inside the neck of her shirt.” (13)
I feel that this passage reiterates several things that have been discussed about Frankie in the first few pages of the novel. Here, she is crying about her old friends, and how they now spread rumors that she smells. Even after John Henry tells her that she smells perfectly fine, Frankie continues to pour perfume all over herself in order to make this mysterious, bad smell go away. Frankie lets herself get consumed by this need to be perfect because of the stage she is at in her life, where every woman feels gangly, boyish, and awkward. Because of Frankie’s age, she doesn’t understand that these changes happen to everybody, and she is unable to deal with the pain that comes from it. Even though she pretends to despise the girls that are mean to her, she still acquiesces to their insults by bathing in perfume because she longs to be accepted.
“She heard him breathe in the darkness, and now she had what she had wanted so many nights that summer; there was somebody sleeping in the bed with her.”(15)
This particular passage shows us that Frankie isn’t as hard and as cold as she wants others to think that she is. She is constantly putting up a a front of toughness because she wants to pretend that being so alone doesn’t actually hurt her. While John Henry is sleeping, she seems to truly appreciate him being there, even though she yells at him when he is awake. It seems that any form of appreciation she gives to someone she cares about only happens when she is sure that they won’t know it.
2. Two words I believe would best describe Franky as a character are “contradictory” and “fearful”. She is contradictory because she is always floating between two extremes. She hates the fact that people make fun of her so she pretends to hate them, when in reality she would love nothing more than to be accepted by them. Also, she is obsessed with getting out of the house, but refuses to even go so far as out to the front porch. Being fearful is also what makes her so contradictory. She wants to openly hate the people in her town, but because she fears being completely ostracized, she tries to make her appearance better. It can also be inferred that she fears what will happen to her when she escapes the hell-hole she calls home.
ooops, the last post was mine.
“For instance, this summer he mentioned once that he had been in swimming and that the mosquitoes were something fierce. This letter jarred upon her dream, but after a few days of bewilderment, she returned to her frozen seas of snow” (7).
I think this moment in McCullers’ novel says a lot about Frankie’s character and her intense need to fantasize about a life much different than hers. The concept of winter and snow is mentioned multiple times in the story so far and it seems like Frankie has created an image about Alaska being a cold yet beautiful place in order to escape her current reality that has become so unsatisfying. I believe Frankie’s fantasies come from her being unsatisfied and when her brother’s letter describes a place with swimming and mosquitoes – a place sounding similar to the warm climate she is currently in – she becomes confused and put off by it because her paradise image has been compromised and therefore has become unsatisfying.
“Frankie had wandered around the tent and looked at every booth. she was afraid of all the Freaks, for it seemed to her that they had looked at her in a secret way and tried to connect their eyes with hers, as though to say: we know you” (20).
In this passage, I believe McCullers is showing Frankie’s very personal thoughts and worries which are expresses many times as her being “afraid.” Specifically i think an aspect of Frankie’s character that is being explained in this moment is her fear of being different, which leads to her insecurities. When she sees the freaks, she is afraid that she sees herself as a twelve year old who is too tall for her age. She feels self-conscious and worries that the other freaks will see in her what they see in themselves. This encounter also demonstrates Frankie’s private nature which contributes to her creating fantasies about running away and also exaggerations about the compliments that Janice gave to her.
2) If i could describe Frankie in two words it would be desperate and emotionally unstable. Frankie is clearly uncomfortable with who she is in relation to others and this causes her to act out in ways that are considered “mean” or just inappropriate to other people. An example of this would be when she throws the knife in her kitchen which demonstrated her reckless instability. her emotional distress is what directly leads Frankie to fantasize and desperately yearn for a new life outside of her town.
1.) “To me it is the irony of fate,” she said. “The way they come here. Those moths could fly anywhere. Yet they keep hanging around the windows of this house. (McCullers 14)
To me, this passage serves as a very good summary of Frankie’s character. She feels trapped in her town and is almost jealous of the moth’s ability to fly anywhere, but like the moth remains at home. The passage also indicates that Frankie has a fairly keen intellect because of her understanding of irony, which seems odd given her age. It seems as if Frankie has matured faster than some of her friends, both intellectually and physically. Because of this her peers feel threatened by her, and respond by ostracizing her. Frankie deals with her isolation by staying at home with Berenice and John Henry.
“They said she was too young and mean. On Saturday night she could hear the terrible music and see from far away their light. Sometimes she went around to the alley behind the clubhouse and stood near a honeysuckle fence. She stood in the alley and watched and listened. (McCullers 12)
Frankie is a very conflicted individual. On the one hand she is left disinterested and intellectually unstimulated by the children of her age. However, she also longs to fit in and engage in normal social interaction with her peers regardless of whether it will satisfy her. Frankie is very complex for her age and is in a transitional period of life.
2.) If I had to pick two adjectives to describe Frankie I would pick imaginative, and reclusive. Frankie is constantly using her imagination to create a world and immerse herself in it. Instead of spending time with other children she tends to just imagine a completely different place and go there in her head. Frankie’s imaginative nature combined with her maturity level are what cause her reclusivness.
“Frankie was too tall this summer to walk beneath the arbor as she had always done before. Other twelve-year-old people could still walk around inside, give shows, and have a good time. Even small grown ladies could walk underneath the arbor. And already Frankie was too big; this year she had to hang around and pick from the edges like the grown people..Standing beside the arbor, with dark coming on, Frankie was afraid. She did not know what caused this fear, but she was afraid”(8).
“John Henry was squatting beside her open suitcase and he gave a little shiver when she poured the perfume over him. He wanted to meddle in her traveling suitcase and look carefully at everything she owned. But Frankie only wanted him to get a general impression, and not count and know just what she had and what she did not have”(13).
Frankie seems to be very displaced, McCullers emphasizes this point by consistently pointing to the reader that Frankie “is not a member”. McCullers’ creation of Frankie seems desperate, even though she clearly has friends and is not wholly isolated, she is seems to be searching for more. She also seems to be afraid of letting people see her for what she really is. For example with the suitcase, she wanted to hide what she had/or didn’t have from J.H. like she wants people to believe what they will about her, because the truth could be more harmful/embarrassing. Two proper adjectives I would ascribe to Frankie are displaced (as mentioned before) and insecure, as explained in regard to the suitcase/perfume scene.
1. Frankie, a 12-year-old girl, is trying to make the awkward shift from being a girl to being a young woman. Physically, she is maturing, and mentally she is maturing extremely quickly. She thinks of everyone, except adults, as children. When her cousin John Henry suggests they go outside and play with other children, Frankie describes them as, “Just a lot of ugly silly children. Running and hollering and running and hollering” (11). Frankie is trying to separate herself from being associated with kids, even though they are older than her. Here, Frankie is distancing herself from other children, because she does not want to be a child, but an adult. McCullers reiterates this notion when Frankie, her cousin John Henry, and her cook Berenice play bridge in the kitchen. Frankie yells to Berenice about her 6-year-old cousin, “He don’t even follow the first beginning laws! He’s a child! It is hopeless! Hopeless! Hopeless!” (16). Even though her cousin is half her age, Frankie cannot deal with his “childishness.” Something so small as playing a card game infuriates Frankie, because John Henry was cheating. However, John Henry is just a little boy and she cannot indulge him at all.
2. Frankie is obsessed with the color yellow and describes many things using this color. A window made a “yellow square reflection” (8), “yellow moths” (13), “gold rim of his glasses” (14), “yellow eyelashes” (18), “the window was still and hard and yellow and bright” (18), “long bright yellow hair” (18), “gold medals” (23), etc. Frankie is also self-conscius in this novel. She often thinks of herself as a freak, possibly because she is going through that awkward stage between being a child to being a teenager. For example, Frankie thinks she will become 9 feet tall “and what would be a lady who is over nine feet high? She would be a Freak” (19).
1. “There was a watery kitchen mirror hanging above the sink. Frankie looked, but her eyes were grey as they always were. Thus summer she was grown so tall that she was almost a big freak, and her shoulders were narrow, her legs too long…Her hair had been cut like a boy’s…The reflection in the glass was warped and crooked…†(p.4)
Frankie feels that she is different from other people her age. Her hair is cut like a boy’s indicating her disconnection from other girls her age and the work ‘freak’ connoted someone who is strange or abnormal. Her differences confuse her and she does not see them in a positive light.
She also has mixed feelings about growing up. On one hand, she wants to act adult as she illustrates when she refuses to go outside to play with the other children. She calls them “’Just a lot of ugly silly children. Running and hollering and running and hollering. Nothing to it.’†(p.11) The predominant emotion, however, is fear. “And already Frankie was too big; this year she had to hang around and pick from the edges like grown people. She started into the tangle of dark vines, and there was the smell of crushed scuppernongs and dust. Standing beside the arbor, with dark coming on, Frankie was afraid. She did not know what caused this fear, but she was afraid.†(p.10).
2. Two adjectives I would assign Frankie are confused and stubborn. Her confusion manifests when she mixes up words; it’s not because she doesn’t know the meaning of words, but because she doesn’t know how to properly describe how she’s feeling. Her stubbornness is hard to miss. Frankie is not the kind of person to back down when she believes something. Not once does she concede to another person’s opinion.
1A. “I’ve been ready to leave this town so long. I wish I didn’y have to come back here after the wedding. I wish I was going somewhere for good. I wish I had a hundred dollars and could just light out and never see this town again…I wish I was sombody else except me.” (7)
It is very strange to me that a girl as young as 12 would be wishing for such things. Most children do not have these feelings until puberty. This passage shows that Frankie does not like the life she has, and she wants to change it but cannot due to her age. She wants to be somebody different, somebody more exciting. She does not feel she is worht anything to anyone.
1B. “Look,” John Henry said, and he was staring out of the window. “I think those big girls are having party in their clubhouse.”
“Hush!” Frankie screamed suddenly. “Don’t mention those crooks to me.”
There was in the neighborhood a clubhouse, and Frankie was not a member.”
In this passage, it shows Frankie an outcast to the other girls in her neighborhood. She is not a member of the clubhouse, because she was kicked out for having a strange odor. The fact that she reacts so negatively towards the subject shows that she wants to apart of something. She wants to be able to contribute to some group or event. But since she is “not a member” of anything, she is lonely without any friends or purpose or her life.
2. I would consider Frankie to be lonely and venturesome. She is lonely, because she is rejected by the neighbor hood kids, her brother is getting married, and her father is always at work. She mayhave her cousin John Henry and the cook Berenice to talk to everyday, but they do not fill her void that she wants to fill. she venturesome, because she is very adament about going somewhere other than where she is now. She wants to get out and explore the world. To see snow or to go see her brother.
1. Frankie is a 12 year old girl, living through her adolescence. She is very lonely, not having a group or set of friends of her own. She is no member of a group, believing that she is above their childish ways. Frankie dresses boyish, wish a short hair cut, battling against the female changes occurring in her body. Frankie imagines herself as an adult, throwing away and shunning on juvenile things. It is embodied well in this passage on page 16, “He don’t even follow the first beginning laws! He’s a child! It is Hopeless! Hopeless!†Frankie perceives herself as an adult in an adolescent body; disliking anything that relates back to her childhood. This idea is emphasized in this passage, “I don’t know what went on in Jarvis mind when he brought me that doll. Imagine bringing me a doll†(18)! Frankie despises anyone thinking of her as a child; trying to break this shell of being considered a child. Frankie is an interesting character relating to a point in all of our lives; adolescence.
2. The first adjective I would use to describe Frankie would be naïve. She seems to ignore the fact that becoming an adult is a result of experience and time, but she somehow wants to skip that and jump straight to adulthood. The second adjective I would use to describe Frankie would be trapped. She is trapped in the persona of a teenager ; in everyone’s minds, she is a teenager, however to her, she is an adult.
1, ” No there not , she said. Just a lot of ugly silly children. Running and hollering and running and hollering.” Frankie believes herself to be better then all of the other children in this novel. Even though she is still a child she is so jealous that she perceives herself as more mature then any of the other children. Out of jealousy and lack of friends she is forced to believe herself better then her peers that have ignored her for so long. She is not only jealouse but this jealousey and lack of friends has drained her self esteem. This lack of self esteem is not helped by the fact that she is growing up very fast and is becoming quite taller then all of the other children. ” do you think that I will grow into a freak. Frankie whispered.” She has very little friends and is not included in any clubs or organization this seclusion has really hurt Frankie’s perception of herself.
2, Two adjectives that best describe Frankie are lonely and self loathing. She hates herself to an extent because nobody includes her in anything socially. She doesn’t belong to any organizations and therefore has very few friends. This has led her down a path of lonelyness and self loathing.
1) “She wore a pair of blue black shorts, a B.V.D. undervest, and she was barefoot.” (McCullers, 4). To be this just screams the image of a twelve year old girl trying to find herself. I also gives me such a clear image of a young child hanging out on a hot summer day. Additionally the way she looks herself in the mirror in that paragraph tells us she is a very uncertain child. She doesn’t seem to think of herself in league with the rest of the children. Instead she feels she’s a lot better than them even if her physical looks aren’t much better.
2) I’d say “lost” and “rushed”. She can’t seem to really find herself and is too eager to do so. She feels like she is being left behind is some way and must grow up quickly so that doesn’t happen. The sooner she reaches adulthood the sooner she might be accepted and “find herself”. She worries how she might turn out, however, as evident when she asks if she will grow up to be a freak.
1) I think Frankie is a cheeky little girl with a lot of personality. She is strong minded and can be very own stubborn. This can come of as a bit bossy, but I feel like she is harmless, she just speaks her mind. When she is with John Henry she is bossy, but for some reason I think it is cute. She is a self conscious twelve year old that acts like she does not care about what anyone thinks of her and a little know it all. I think it is because the reader gets to understand and feel what she feels in the inside as well as the outside. “Frankie titled back in her chair and crossed her bare feet on her desk. “If I were you I’d just throw those glasses away,” she said “you can see good as anybody.” John Henry did not answer. “They don’t look becoming.”(14) On the surface this seems mean and bossy, but Frankie is just saying what she feels and thinks she is helping him out. “Maybe they will change their mind and invite you,”John Henry said. “The son-of-a bitches.” (12) Frankie is really upset by the girls excluding her but she acts tougher than she feels. That’s why I like her, she does not want to to seem vulnerable and admit that people do get to her. For a twelve year old I find that admirable and I feel for her.
2) I would categorization Frankie as Curious and Misunderstood. I use these two adjectives because she is always thinking of what if’s and is constantly thinking up of little scenarios in her head and and sometimes her randomness can be seen as weird, but I think people just don’t get her. She is a unique little girl.”I just don’t follow your frame of mind,” said Berenice.”(17) Although, she is very young she is ready to experience more and see the world “The red greasy cards were messed together on the table , and the sight of them made Frankie sick.”(17)