Gender Roles

Something I found interesting that helped portray Esch’s upcoming motherhood was how she acted towards skeetah with bandaging him up after he’d been cut up. I felt like this was to reflect herself in a motherly way, also as being the only girl it was somewhat a “duty” to act in this manner. There are definitely different expectations as far as gender goes in this book. Daddy specifically seeks out the boys while working on the truck, while only asking Esch to sit in the seat and start it when told. Esch was also thrown into the motherly position of the family after her mother died, seeing as next to Randall, she was taking care of Junior the most out of the rest of the family.  In Bois Sauvage, it seems that with regard to gender the female role is to do as told and manage the children while the male role is working and controlling the family.

                At this point Manny is obviously not meant to be a favorite character of the book. While trying to give China this special mixture that Skeetah had to fix, I found it interesting how Manny said that he didn’t want to come in because China didn’t like him, to which Skeetah replied that China likes everyone. Dogs are said to be a good judge of character, so I’m not sure if this was meant to continue to depict Manny as not the greatest person or just something in the story.