Comment

The second part of your exam question asks you to comment upon the relationship between the main character and her mother, Estelle, as presented in “The Shape of a Star” by Jen Knox. You should also include terms like setting, narrator, conflict and main theme in your comment.

As you have seen, the main theme of the short story is that of mother-daughter relationships. In this particular story, like in many others, such a relationship implies a conflict emerging between two different women of different ages and with different personalities.

Estelle

For Estelle, an artist and a perfectionist, it was very difficult to see her daughter growing up to be awkward in her interpersonal relationships and focused on boyish activities. This is why Estelle was determined to “fix” (l. 42) her daughter through exercises she invented herself:

One such exercise included going to the mall and striking up conversations with all of the salespeople we came in contact with. She insisted that I talk to each person until I had one personal tidbit to share with her. (ll. 43-45)

Through these types of exercises, Estelle wanted her “most creative work” (l. 84) to be fixed and “come around” (l. 86),...

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The narrator

At the same time, the narrator found it hard to rise to her mother’s expectations when, in fact, she was different from Estelle.

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The conflict

Because the two women could not meet in the middle, the conflict between them affected them both: Estelle could only forgive her daughter for being so different only on her death bed, while the narrator kept on feeling as a failure even after her mother’s death.

This is probably why the narrator felt the need to blame her mother for everything bad in her life: “When I set out to understand why she was the way she was, I became obsessed, thinking Mom was the reason I’d made each bad decision.” (ll. 89-90)

However, as she is now mature enough, the narrator becomes aware of the fact that blaming her mother for her failures is not a good idea. By acknowledging this, the narrator finally begins to understand herself and her mother: “I wanted sympathy, to point the finger at Estelle, but when someone else agreed with me all I could think was to defend my mother. She was merely a person, after all.” (ll. 94-95)

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