preview

Ashleigh's Mistake In Thousand Words By Jennifer Brown

Decent Essays

Thousand Words, Jennifer Brown In the novel Thousand Words, Ashleigh makes a crucial mistake by sending her boyfriend a scandalous picture, only for it to ultimately backfire. During this time, she feels controlled, and her emotions are basically the toys of everyone surrounding her. Because of this, the story is about power, namely being powerless in a situation that’s out of your hands. From the first time we meet her, Ashleigh is extremely remorseful. She no longer feels like her life has much worth, and most of her life is now dictated by others, as with the community service sentence and the constant harassment. When regretting the picture, Ashleigh says, “What I wouldn’t have given to go back to that night and do things over again.” (Brown 170). Clearly, she is not in a position of power; she is the one that is oppressed. Her desire for power, in this situation, is to have the power to make everything go back to normal, or how it was before this horrible incident. She wants her friends to like her again, she wants to make her own decisions, and she wants to stop being bothered and harassed. As Ashleigh said herself, “I’d had enough. I didn’t want to …show more content…

This fight transforms her from a former popular girl who lost everything to a strong girl who can bounce back from anything. By the end of the story, she gains some confidence back and can stick up to the bullies dragging her down. Her freedom does not come in the form of fighting them, nor is it attained by dragging them down with her. It comes by accepting herself, which really shows who she has become, and gives the book much better message (and overall story) than “‘skank’ screws up”. At the very last part, she and her friend Mack write, “A picture is worth a thousand words, but they don’t tell the whole story.” (Brown 272) When she realizes that there’s more to her than that nude picture, she has

Get Access