Maureen Daly

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The main message and the effect of Maureen Daly's word choice in "Sixteen"

Summary:

The main message of Maureen Daly's "Sixteen" revolves around the innocence and emotional intensity of teenage love. Daly's word choice effectively captures the protagonist's youthful enthusiasm and naivety, creating a relatable and poignant narrative that resonates with readers. Her use of simple, evocative language enhances the story’s emotional impact, drawing readers into the protagonist’s experiences and feelings.

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What is the main message Maureen Daly communicates in the story "Sixteen"?

In "Sixteen," Daly communicates a message that life isn't a fairy tale with a happy-ever-after ending. The 16-year-old female narrator is naive as the story opens, although she thinks she isn't. Most of her knowledge comes from what she reads in magazines, not from direct experience. Much of her "knowledge" is superficial, too, such as that girls should wear tweed skirts and tight sweaters.

When a handsome boy approaches her while she is skating by herself at the ice rink, puts his arm around her waist, and asks if he can skate with her, she is carried away. He is not any boy but a "big shot" and the "best dancer in town." Although they only seem to skate a short time, they also sit on a snowbank and watch the skaters before he walks her home.

The narrator is walking on air after the boy drops her off, telling her he will call her. But when almost a week has passed and he hasn't called, the girl faces a reality that makes "tears run salty": he is never going to call.

The story deals with the intensity of youthful infatuation and desire. The girl weaves what was a casual encounter with a popular boy—he apparently was at loose ends and amused himself with her for a few hours—into a fantasy of the beginnings of a magical romance. This is what she wishes would happen, as it would be the perfect fairy-tale ending, but she has to accept that life doesn't work that way.

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I would argue that Maureen Daly's urging us to see that, when it comes to love, it's important to remain aware of the difference between reality and fantasy. When people fall in love, as the narrator of "Sixteen" does, they tend to lose all sense of perspective and become prone to delusions, especially if they're adolescents. The heart may have its reasons, as Pascal famously noted, but one can't suppress one's capacity for reasoning, even when it comes to affairs of the heart.

The narrator clearly realizes this herself, which is why she's at such great pains to point out how incredibly clued-up and intelligent she is right from the very start. It's as if she's trying to get us not to judge her too harshly for her lapse of judgement in constructing a fantasy out of a misunderstanding of the boy's true feelings. Yet lapse she does, and despite her obvious intelligence, and her precocious knowledge of many things, she allows herself to escape—albeit briefly—into a world of romantic fantasy. As the narrator's lost love merrily wends his way home through the snow, harsh reality abruptly intrudes into the young lady's life, and she doesn't know quite what to do with herself.

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Another very important message the author may be trying to communicate is that the ambiguity between true attraction and superficial flirtation often creates an emotional minefield in the arena of romance.

In the story, our unnamed narrator hopes for the young man to call. After all, he had seemed sufficiently absorbed in her at the skating rink. During their time together, the young man had been confident, attentive, and gallant. Like a professional pick-up artist, the young man had been able to make her believe that he was deeply and irreversibly attracted to her.

As time progressed, however, the protagonist had to embrace reality: "he will never, never call—never." One of the first clues that the young man was only interested in a brief flirtation with her was his immediate emotional engagement upon physical contact. He did not ask for permission to put his arm around her waist; he simply did it. Throughout his encounter with the protagonist, he set the tone for every exchange. He showed no inclination to get to know her as an individual. Our heroine concedes that she remembers nothing about the content of their conversation, only the laughter that accompanied it.

Later, the young man voiced his intention to take our heroine home; again, he did not ask for her permission to do so. His every action was calculated to project cool confidence and self-possession. Against her better judgment, the protagonist felt herself helplessly drawn to the young man. So, yes, Maureen Daly's story definitely highlights the fine line between true desire and gratuitous flirtation.

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The message that Maureen Daly conveys in the story "Sixteen" is that in affairs of the heart it is best to use your head to temper the feelings of the heart.  The main character says, "My heart still prays but my mind laughs. Finally, mind wins!" "Sixteen" is a story of unrequited love. The young girl in the story feels the young man she yearns for is different; he really has feelings for her. But, he never calls, and he ends up being like so many other young men she has fallen for. “I know what the stars knew all the time—he’ll never, never call—never,” she realizes. The message is an age old one that many young people learn over and over as they grow to use reason when dealing with love as opposed to using only their feelings, which run the gamut of love and passion, to anger, and finally to reason and moving on.

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What is the main message in Maureen Daly's "Sixteen" and how does her word choice affect it?

The main message of the story is that infatuation doesn't always equal true love. We can all sympathize with the girl in the story who is flattered by the young man's attention. He is a consummate flirt; his first gesture is to encircle his arms warmly and protectively around her waist when he asks her if she minds him skating with her. He takes command of each situation, is closely attentive to her, and talks to her in an intimate manner. The girl falls hard for him, but this is only a game for someone who is known as a 'big shot' in school and the 'best dancer in town.'

She is so infatuated that she believes him when he says he is going to call. However, she is soon disappointed and learns the truth that every teenager eventually acquires: a master flirt often knows how to manipulate the emotions of others to his advantage, but it never leads to a promising relationship for the one who hopes.

As for word choice, the author cleverly uses some effective literary devices to describe the disappointment and pain of a young heart. No where is this more apparent than in the last paragraph.

Tonight is Tuesday. Tonight is Tuesday and my homework is done and I darned some stocking that really didn't need it, and I worked a cross-word puzzle and I listened to the radio and now I'm just sitting. I'm just sitting because I can't think of anything else to do.

The use of anaphora (as in the words 'tonight' and 'I') and anadiplosis (as in the phrase 'I'm just sitting') highlights a lot of repetition on the girl's part;  her anxiety is painfully apparent. She is basically just engaging in repetitive, mindless tasks to pass the time in case the young man does call. In the end, she realizes that

For all of a sudden, I know, I know what the stars knew all the time - he will never, never call - never.

The repetition of the word 'never' ( epimone) and 'know' highlights the young girl's mental and emotional anguish. Each 'never' is like a throbbing wound; the young man has let her down terribly, and it hurts.

Hope this helps!

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How does Maureen Daly's word choice in "Sixteen" affect the story's theme?

The main theme in this short story is the theme of young love. The author, at the end of the story, uses the setting to portray how the girl aches for and longs after the boy who said he would call her. The stars are described as "hard little lights up in the sky," and the moon is described as emitting "a sharp yellow glare." The stars and the moon are conventional symbols of romance, and in these quotations they are subverted (from romantic to cold and harsh), implying that the romance between the girl and the boy has soured. The air is also described as "suddenly cold," and the wind "wipe(s) out his footsteps." This latter quotation can be read metaphorically to imply that the boy, and the love he seemed to have for the girl, has vanished, just like his footsteps in the snow.

The last time the girl saw the boy, she watched him walk away from her "down the street" and listened to him whistling. She then says that she "couldn't tell if it was (him) or (her) heart whistling out there in the night." The personification of her heart in this quotation suggests that her heart felt as if it was trying to reach out to him and as if it was in synchronicity with his.

The fact that the narrator is young, and thus perhaps loves naively, is suggested throughout the story by a semantic field of language connoting her youth. For example, "my homework is done," "my mother always puts the porch light on" and, describing the boy she falls in love with, "he was a big shot up at school." Her youth is also implied heavily in the opening paragraph by language which connotes how self-conscious she is about her appearance. For example, she says that she never wears a hankie because "it makes (her) face seem too wide," and she says that she knows that it is "absolutely forbidden to wear coloured ankle-socks with high-heeled shoes."

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Central themes in Maureen Daly's short story "Sixteen" concern a teenager's unrequited love or a teenager's disappointments in love. Daly craftily uses her diction, meaning word choices, to portray the youthfulness and hopeless romanticism of the nameless protagonist.

Diction to portray the protagonist as a young, naive teenager can be found in the very first paragraph. One example can be seen in the fact that opening with the sentence, "I want you to understand from the beginning that I'm not really so dumb," actually produces the exact opposite effect. From that moment, the reader is on pins and needles just waiting for the protagonist to do something that seems rather dumb. Her youthful naivete is further portrayed in such statements as, "I read the Broadway columns" and further statements about reading Hollywood gossip--the protagonist is clearly taken in by the romanticism of Hollywood.

Other diction choices that portray the protagonist as a naive, hopeless romantic concern the fact that she describes the night as "breathlessly quiet" and the night sky being filled with a "million flirting eyes." The irony the protagonist points out that it is snowing a little though she perceives the night to be clear further helps capture her naivete. Hence, the reader is not very surprised by the time the protagonist explains she never saw or heard from the boy again.

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