Role of mentor in childhood. analysis of the cat and the coffee drinkers and ysrael

Universidad del Valle

The role of mentors in childhood
Analysis of the stories:
The Cat and the Coffee Drinkers by Max Steele
&
Ysrael by Junot Díaz.

Childhood is, perhaps, themost important stage in human development since it is here where basis for an adult behavior are settled. All of our future habits will be learnt and built in this period and so our further stages, asteenagers and adults, will be shaped according to what has been taught, what has been told to us and what we had seen in others. In these two stories (the Cat and the Coffee Drinkers by Max Steele& Ysrael by Junot Díaz) I will analyze the role mentors play in childhood, putting aside the so called positive or negative influence for it is not the intention of this writing to list any of them asgood or bad but to describe the experience as a whole.
In each story we can find a general interconnection: both of them depict situations in which some characters behave as, let us say, teacherswhile others are set as students. In this order stated before I'll start the analysis of “teachers’” characters first.
In Mr. Steele's story, Miss Effie is an old teacher, she is in her seventies andshe is well known in her community. With a strong character exposed by the direct way she refers to others, Miss Effie's subjects of teaching focuses on daily life routines, good manners and reading.No pedagogical background is given about her, so we assume she has learnt from experiences. Also, we can say this task Miss Effie does is not a job, but a “service” she offers to her community and away she supplements her income, “for no Southern lady of her generation “worked””. On the other hand, in Mr. Díaz's story, this role is assumed by Rafa, a twelve years old boy, from we can establish hesurely learnt all he knows from his experiences with his clique in the streets of Santo Domingo. Rafa is an aggressive boy, brave also, whose relationship with his younger brother is only fine when...