Rufus At The Door:

I chose to write about "Rufus at the Door" looking at it through a gender lens and how Miss Sylvestri takes on masculine features through the story. I changed my paragraph so that it talks about just one character in the story instead of two, and added in a quote with analysis on it so that it proves my gender thesis point better. I also added to the conclusion and changed some sentence structure around.

In the story “Rufus at the Door” The narrator plays the part of a 16 year old boy who goes on to talk about a moron named Rufus who is incompetent to the real world. Looking at it through a gender lense; all of the people in the story are either male or take on a masculine role.

The women in the story pose to have very masculine features. Miss Silvestri is a teacher whose name shows her independence. Since she isn’t a Mrs. This shows she isn’t married so she takes care of herself and most likely lives on her own. She is controlling and has order over the students. “...But Miss Silvestri begged to differ. She said nobody was having lunch until somebody came up with a moron.”(pg. 23, Rufus at the Door, Jon Hassler) She does not allow them to leave the bus until they answer the question she has asked overpowering Mr. Lance who said the children could go eat. Wanting to get her point across Miss Silvestri forced the students to puke out what she wanted to hear before they could engorge themselves at the cafe. The fact that she also finds it acceptable to talk to students about who in the town is an imbecile or a moron gives you the feeling she is a bit heartless or close minded which are also quite masculine features for a woman of her stature to possess. Especially a teacher who should be open to learning and accepting new and different things or people. Aside from Miss Silvestri, almost all of the characters in the story are men, which shows the authors point of view on the world and foreshadows how he sees his own authority as a male figure. The fact that he chose to do this makes the world he has created seem like a colder and rougher place to live compared to the real world.