preview

The Winter Oak and Leela's Friend Essay

Good Essays

Explore how adults’ jumping to conclusions affects the lives of younger people in - The Winter Oak - and - Leela’s friend. - How is this presented to the reader?

Leela’s parents, throughout the story, are short tempered and preoccupied. They do not have a lot of time for Leela, leading to
Sidda being her main Guardian and role model. He is very malleable and plays at Leela’s command, but as a servant he has little choice in the matter: “‘Sidda, come and play!’ Leela would cry and Seeda had to drop any work he might be doing and run to her.”

He has a lot of time for Leela and his vivid imagination excites and amazes her. This demonstrated by Sidda’s magical stories of the moon.
Leela recognises a personality in Seeda that …show more content…

Like Leela’s parents, the police also assume Sidda’s guilt, which shows they are jumping to conclusions. It becomes apparent to the reader that Sidda has been in jail previously for stealing ‘jewellery from children’. Sidda, however, denies guilt:

‘I have not taken it’ and Leela supports him, ‘…he hasn’t taken the chain’. The adults disbelieve Sidda and they regard Leela as unreliable, just because she is a child. The removal of Sidda is devastating for
Leela. She is so distraught that her father has to carry her back into the house. For days later she misses Sidda, not her chain.

When Leela’s mother finds the chain Leela says:

‘Give it here I want to wear the chain,’

And her unreliable and casual recollection about putting the chain in the pot reinforces how unimportant the chain really is to Leela.
Sadly, in her childish naivety she does not recognise how the missing chain has caused such a problem for Sidda. The father dismisses the whole ‘bother’ by declaring that:

‘The child must not have a chain hereafter,’

but he still sees Sidda as a thief and does no intend to reemploy him.
It is possible that the father regrets jumping to the conclusion that
Sidda is a thief but he is embarrassed by his mistake and it does not change his attitude to the servant; he does not intend to reemploy
Sidda. Poor Sidda is branded as a thief of children’s jewellery even though this story shows how children

Get Access