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Survivor Teptie Quotes

Decent Essays

Throughout the course of the novel, the reader witnesses Mattie evolve from a self-absorbed 14-year-old girl to an aspiring young adult. These changes seen in her happen simply because she has no other choice considering the circumstances she is put in. During the year of the fever epidemic, Mattie’s stages of growth and development into a responsible young women are made evident through her experiences. In the beginning, we see “Teenager Mattie”. Mattie is kind of mean to her mother, sleeps in late, and when given some responsibilities, she usually has to be badgered into performing them. She is selfish and pretty self-absorbed - like most kids her age - unknowing of the hardships that lay ahead for her and her family. Next, we see “Victim …show more content…

But, things do get worse when Matilda witnesses her grandfather get attacked and killed by nasty thieves. These experiences cause her intense pain and suffering on a personal level. Then we see “Survivor Mattie”. She has seen and felt terrible things, but refuses to give up. She takes a little orphan girl named Nell under her wing because she knows what it’s like to be alone in the world and wants to give aid to others. This seems to be the point in her life where she takes a complete role reversal. She is no longer the careless teenager like we read about in the beginning, but a compassionate and strong-willed person. “Caregiver Mattie” - she finally learned to care about people in a big way. This is shown through her actions of learning to share and put others before her self. She has now appointed herself as the unofficial guardian of the orphan nell, and also begins working with Eliza and the Free African Society to nurse the citizens of Philadelphia back to health. Mattie is no longer a victim of the fever epidemic, but instead she is empowered by helping others in …show more content…

This novel falls into the category of historical fiction for many reasons. Of course, the fact that that the novel is based on the 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Philadelphia is one of them. Matilda and the other characters in the book are fictional characters, but some of the events taking place happened to real life people during this time period. In the story, Mattie witnesses her mother become ill with the fever, falls ill of it herself and helps take care of many others who are sick as well. The symptoms explained in the story are directly correlated with those that the real people of Philadelphia experienced when ill with the fever. When researching the epidemic, i learned that some of the third-phase symptoms of yellow fever are jaundice, vomiting blood, shock and multi organ failure leading to death. The author describes all of these things in the novel through the eyes of Mattie. She describes the symptoms when talking about her mother when saying that, “the fever had taken hold of her symptoms and she wept, calling my father’s name,” and when she describes her mother’s eyes as “cornflower blue eyes poisoned with streaks of yellow and red,” and when she talks about her mother being violently ill and vomiting blood all over the bed and floor. Although the fever itself is the prominent subject of the story, they're are many other things in this novel that tie this book accurately to the time period and make it a historical fiction novel. The fever took a toll on

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