Jessica Polina

March 5th, 2019

AP Literature

Timed Writing

In this excerpt, it can be inferred that Estrella is portrayed as a young girl who is angry
towards different people for different reasons. It starts with a “red tool chest like a suitcase near
the door”. Estrella sees no purpose for this tool chest to be in front of her door as if it were to be
there to guard. It “seemed as confusing and foreign as the alphabet she could not decipher”,
this sentence used as figurative language made Estrella confused and silent with rage. It is
written in this excerpt that Estrella’s mother believes that her daughter is “a victim of the evil
eye.”

It is clear that Estrella seems to be struggling with something as it is brought up that

things were being kept from her, which is one the reasons why she is so enraged. Family nor
school teachers were giving her the information she seeked for. “...Some of the teachers were
more concerned about the dirt under her fingernails. They inspected her for lice, parting her long
hair with ice cream sticks.” While reading this piece of the passage, Estrella is seen by her
school staff faculty as a dirty girl with lice. At first I wondered, “Why is it only her being
inspected? Is she really that dirty than all the other students attending her school?” Further on in
the text it states, “They said good luck to her when the pisca was over, reserving the desks in
the back of the classroom for the next batch of migrant children.” This seemed like an act of
discrimination because of the examination of only migrant children, and Estrella seems of
Hispanic descent.

One of Estrella’s teacher’s Mrs. Horn was curious of the fact that why her mother didn’t
give Estrella a bath. Estrella never thought of herself as being dirty since she wiped her face
every morning and had her mother do her hair neatly. However, all of that didn’t seem enough
for Mrs. Horn. She describes Mrs. Horn as the woman “who had the face of a crumpled Kleenex
and a nose like a hook.” This quote seems quite coincidental since it relates back to the shapes
of different tools.

Overall, this tool chest still seems to be the main thing on Estrella’s mind. She brings up
the man who is the owner of this tool chest which is, Perfecto Flores. Perfecto also seems to be
a migrant who doesn’t really have a record of his birth but only a date that appears in his
dreams, 1917. “No one remembered knowing him before his arrival, but everyone used his
name to describe a job well done.” From this quote I got to understand that even though
Perfecto didn’t really have a record of who he was, the tool box was an object that
demonstrated that to those around him.

Estrella was able to acknowledge Perfecto’s ways with his tool chest. It gave Perfecto a
reason to work and have something to do that he was good at, Estrella understood that. “She
lifted the pry bar in her hand, felt the coolness of iron and power of function, weighed the
significance it awarded her, and soon she came to understand how essential it was to know
these things. That was when she began to read.” Estrella was able to realize the ability and
power that Perfecto had with his tool chest and all the things he could do with it that Estrella
believed that she could have the ability and power to be able to read.