The hundred dresses - Eleanor Estes

The hundred dresses - Eleanor Estes

  

저자 : Eleanor Estes

그림 : Louis Slobodkin

출판 : 롱테일북스

뉴베리 문학상 시리즈

Lexile 870L

 

 

1.   그와 내가 다르지 않다

 

 

저는 학창시절에 괴롭힘을 당하는 아이와 저와의 차이가 무엇인지 생각해 본 적이 있습니다.

같은 동네에 살고, 키도 비슷하고, 얼굴도 같이 못 생겼고, 차이점이 거의 없었습니다. 굳이 찾자면 저는 학급 반장을 하며 상위권의 성적이었고, 놀림 받는 친구는 하위권의 성적이었습니다. 그러나 그 차이는 커 보이지 않았습니다.. 괴롭힘의 표적에서 벗어나는 작은 이유가 될 수도 있지만, 큰 차이는 아니라는 생각이 그 어린 마음에도 들었습니다.

 

“그와 내가 다르지 않다.”

괴롭힘을 당하는 아이와 내가 다르지 않음이 저에게는 공포였습니다.

괴롭힘을 당하는 아이를 도와주고 싶지만, 그와 내가 다르지 않기에 표적이 제가 될 수도 있음은 공포였습니다. 다들 그렇게 생각하는 것인지, 암묵적 동의를 하고, 동의의 웃음을 날리는 것은 역겨웠습니다. 그리고 다른 사람을 믿을 수 없기에 친구를 사귀기도 힘들었습니다.

도와 주고 싶지만 그렇지 못 했습니다. 못 도와주는 것은 잠시의 안도감을 주었지만, 스스로에 대해 한심함과 자괴감과 언제 내가 표적이 될 지 모른다는 두려움과 불안은 아주 길고 싶게 남아있습니다. 아무렇지 않은 척하고 살지만 실은 그렇습니다. 중년의 나이가 되었음에도 그렇습니다.

 

이 책은 ‘학교폭력’이라기에는 약하다고 생각하지만, 아이들 세상에서 놀림과 갈등 그리고 그 뉘우침과 용서의 과정을 다룬 아동문학 입니다. 아동은 물론이고 성인들도 생각해 볼만한 주제이고, 분량도 짧기에 읽기에 좋습니다. 다만 영어단어가 8~9세 아이가 읽기에는 다소 어렵지 않을까 생각해 봅니다.

 

저는 여전히 어렸을 때 다 배우지 못한 사회화 과정에 있는 중년이기에, 이 책은 저에게 좋았습니다. 여전히 저는 익숙지 못한 ‘갈등’, ‘협력’ 그리고 ‘화해’와 ‘용서’, ‘사랑’을 배우고 있는 중이거든요.

 

2.   이 책의 내용 발췌

 

p. 12~p. 17 외톨이 Wanda 

 

[ Wanda didn’t have any friends. She came to school alone and went home alone. She always wore a faded blue dress that didn’t hang right. It was clean, but it looked as though it had never been ironed properly. She didn’t have any friends, but a lot of girls talked to her. They waited for her under the maple trees on the corner of Oliver Street. Or they surrounded her in the school yard as she stood watching some little girls play hopscotch on the worn hard ground.

 

“Wanda,” Peggy would say in a most courteous manner, as though she were talking to Miss Maison or to the principal perhaps. “Wanda,” she’d say, giving one of her friends a nudge, “tell us. How many dresses did you say you had hanging up in your closet?”

 

“A hundred,” said Wanda.

“A hundred!” exclaimed all the girls incredulously, and the little girls would stop playing hopscotch and listen.

 

“Yeah, a hundred, all lined up,” said Wanda. Then her thin lips drew together in silence.

“What are they like? All silk, I bet,” said Peggy.

“Yeah, all silk, all colors.”

“Velvet, too?”

“Yeah, velvet, too. A hundred dresses,” repeated Wanda stolidly. “All lined up in my closet.”

 

Then they’d let her go. And then before she’d gone very far, they couldn’t help bursting into shrieks and peals of laughter.

 

A hundred dresses! Obviously the only dress Wanda had was the blue one she wore every day. So what did she say she had a hundred for? What a story! And the girls laughed derisively, while Wanda moved over to the sunny place by the ivy-covered brick wall of the school building where she usually stood and waited for the bell to ring.

 

But if the girls had met her at the corner of Oliver Street, they’d carry her along with them for a way, stopping every few feet for more incredulous questions. And it wasn’t always dresses they talked. Sometimes it was hats, or coats, or even shoes.

 

“How many shoes did you say you had?”

“Sixty.”

“Sixty! Sixty pairs or sixty shoes?”

“Sixty pairs. All lined up in my closet.”

“Yesterday you said fifty.”

“Now I got sixty.”

Cries of exaggerated politeness greeted this.

“All alike?” said the girls.

“Oh, no. Every pair is different. All colors. All lined up.” And Wanda would shift her eyes quickly from Peggy to a distant spot, as though she were looking far ahead, looking but not seeing anything.

 

Then the outer fringe of the crowd of girls would break away gradually, laughing, and little by little, in pairs, the group would disperse. Peggy, who had thought up this game, and Maddie, her inseparable friend, were always the last to leave. And finally Wanda would move up the street, her eyes dull and her mouth closed tight, hitching her left shoulder every now and then in the funny way she had, finishing the walk to school alone. ]

 

 

p. 18-19 Maddie 의 갈등 시작

 

[ As for Maddie, this business of asking Wanda every day how many dresses and how many hats and how many this and that she had was bothering her. Maddie was poor herself. She usually wore somebody’s hand-me-down clothes. Thank goodness she didn’t live up on Boggins Heights or have a funny name. And her forehead didn’t shine the way Wanda’s round one did. What did she use on it? Sapolio? That’s what all the girls wanted to know.

 

Sometimes when Peggy was asking Wanda those questions in that mock polite voice, Maddie felt embarrassed and studied the marbles in the palm of her hand, rolling them around and saying nothing herself. Not that she felt sorry for Wanda exactly. She would never have paid any attention to Wanda if Peggy hadn’t invented the dresses game. But suppose Peggy and all the others started in on her next! She wasn’t as poor as Wanda perhaps, but she was poor. Of course she would have more sense than to say a hundred dresses. Still she would not like them to begin on her. Not at all! Oh, dear! She did with Peggy would stop teasing Wanda Petronski. ]

 

 

p. 35 Maddie가 자신이 표적이 될까 걱정하는 모습

 

[ Nothing she could do about making fun of Wanda. She wished she had the nerve to write Peggy a note, because she knew she’d never have the courage to speak right out to Peggy, to say, “Hey, Peg, let’s stop asking Wanda how many dresses she has.”

 

When she finished her arithmetic, she did start a note to Peggy. Suddenly she paused and shuddered. She pictured herself in the school yard, a new target for Peggy and the girls. Peggy might ask her where she got the dress she had on, and Maddie would have to say that it was one of Peggy’s old ones that Maddie’s mother had tried to disguise with new trimmings so that no one in Room 13 would recognize it.

 

If only Peggy would decide of her own accord to stop having fun with Wanda. Oh, well! Maddie ran her hand through her short blond hair as though to push the uncomfortable thoughts away. What difference did it make? Slowly Maddie tore the note she had started into bits. ]

 

 

p. 52 Maddie 가 사과하러 가는길의 심경

 

[ Maddie could say nothing. All she hoped was that they would find Wanda. Just so she’d be able to tell her they were sorry they had all picked on her. And just to say how wonderful the whole school thought she was, and please not to move away and everybody would be nice. She and Peggy would fight anybody who was not nice

 

Maddie fell to imagining a story in which she and Peggy assailed any bully who might be going to pick on Wanda. “Petronski-Onski!” somebody would yell, and she and Peggy would pounce on the guilty one. For a time Maddie consoled herself with these thoughts, but they soon vanished and again she felt unhappy and wished everything could be nice the way it was before any of them had made fun of Wanda ]

 

 

p. 60-63 Maddie 가 뉘우치고 결심.

 

[ When they back down on Oliver Street again, the girls stopped running. They still felt disconsolate, and Maddie wondered if she were going to be unhappy about Wanda and the hundred dresses forever. Nothing would ever seem good to her again, because just when she was about to enjoy something – like going for a hike with Peggy to look for bayberries or sliding down Barley Hill- she’d bump right smack into the thought that she had made Wanda Petronski move away.

 

“Well, anyway.” Said Peggy, “she’s gone now, so what can we do? Besides, when I was asking her about all of her dresses she probably was getting good ideas for her drawings. She might not even have won the contest otherwise.”

 

Maddie carefully turned this idea over in her dead, for if there were anything in it she would not have to feel so bad. But that night she could not get to sleep. She thought about Wanda and her faded blue dress and the little house she had lived in: and old man Svenson living a few steps away. And she thought of the glowing picture those hundred dresses made – all lined up in the classroom

 

At last Maddie sat up in bed and pressed her forehead tight in her hands and really thought. This was the hardest thinking she had ever done. After a long, long time she reached an important conclusion.

 

She was mever going to stand by and say nothing again.

If she ever heard anybody picking on someone because they were funny looking or because they had strange name, she’d speak up. Even if it meant losing Peggy’s friendship. She had no way of making shings right with Wanda, but from now on she would never make anybody else so unhappy again. Finally, all tired out, Maddie fell asleep. ]

 

 

p. 67 꿈에서라도 뉘우치는 Maddie

 

[ Several weeks went by and still Wanda did not answer.

Peggy had begun to forget the whole business, and Maddie put herself to sleep at night making speeches about Wanda, defending her from great crowds of girls who were trying to tease her with, “How many dresses have you got?” Before Wanda could press her lips together in a tight line the way she did before answering, Maddie would cry out, “Stop! This girl is just a girl just like you are…” And then everybody would feel ashamed the way she used to feel. Sometimes she rescued Wanda from a sinking ship or the hoofs of a runaway horse. “Oh, that’s all right,” she’d say when Wanda thanked her with dull pained eyes. ]

 

 

3.   마무리 - “Stop! This girl is just a girl just like you are…”

 

[ “Stop! This girl is just a girl just like you are…” ]

이 구절이 이 책 내용의 핵심이라고 생각합니다.

괴롭힘을 당하는 그와 내가 다르지 않음이 저의 어린 시절엔 공포나 두려움, 후회나 모멸감으로만 남았다면, 이 책의 주인공은 그걸 넘어서서, 스스로 뉘우치고 생각하고 행동함으로 넘어서고 성장하는 것처럼 보입니다. 저 역시 더 성장 해야 할 부분들이 많이 있기에 여전히 성장소설이나 아동문학이 좋은가 봅니다. 결론을 직접적으로 말씀 드리진 않았습니다. 여러분께서 직접 읽어보셔도 좋고, 읽지 않으시더라도 마음이 가는 결론을 생각해 보시는 것도 좋으리라 생각합니다.

 

영어 공부로는 좋았습니다.

이전의 두 책 ‘Matilda’나 ‘Holes’에 비해 단어가 쉽진 않았지만, 훨씬 적기에 1주일에 2번을 읽을 수 있었습니다. 반복하기에는 이렇게 분량이 짧은 책이 좋겠습니다.

긴 글 봐주셔서 감사합니다. 항상 건강하시길 바랍니다. 사랑 충만하시길 바랍니다.