Share your literary essay with the rest of the students that chose this short story. Take some time to read 2 or 3 other essays. Comment on them. Your comment should be about something you noticed them doing well from our lessons. For example, "You did a really good job explaining your evidence"
“Eraser Tattoo” is a story written by Jason Reynolds that takes place at Shay's house before she leaves to her new house. What makes this story interesting is that Shay and Dante are dating but Shay has to move. Even though Shay is moving they are staying together, In their last moments together Shay is giving Dante an eraser tattoo. The story focuses on Shay and Dante in their last moments together before Shay moves. In this Dante doesn't see a really important part in their relationship. Jason uses this to teach us lessons on unrequited love; Love may be strong but it can be unrequited.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading this short story the reader realizes with one sentence that Dante wanted to stay with Shay no matter what. He wanted to be with her, he loved her. This is when Jason Reynolds shows the theme first with the sentence “I'm gonna buy you a plane ticket. Shoot I might just buy you a whole plane. And this house so we can live in it”. On this same page, the reader read this “Shay nodded but didn't respond”. These quotes it back up the theme because it is showing that there is unrequited love between them. Dante is expressing his love while Shay is not and is just sitting there. While they were sitting there talking, Shay had this on her mind “ Let's be real, what if we break up? ''. This also connects to the theme because while Dante was expressing his feelings she was thinking of them breaking up. The reader realizes that Shay is not so sure about being in a relationship with Dante. She didn't want to be with him if she had them breaking up on her mind.
Shay has changed so much through the short story. At the beginning of the story, Shay is confident that she and Dante will stay together, but through the story, she starts to ask Dante things like “What if we break up” or if he says treasuring things she won't respond. That clearly shows that Dante is in an unrequited relationship with Shay. She has changed so much and the reader thinks that it is because she has finally realized that she and Dante won't always be together. Or maybe she just doesn't want to be in a long-distance relationship with Dante. While Dante is still trying to keep the relationship alive she has already begun to get over it. Dante changes too, but not till the end of the book. He has slowly realized that he and Shay weren't always going to be together. He realized what was going to happen in the future with the relationship between them. This could be interpreted as creating a theme of Love; however, it clearly created a theme of love that may be strong but can be unrequited. Dante loves Shay while Shay doesn't love him as much.
Ryan Reynolds uses symbolism throughout the short story. The symbolism would be the eraser tattoo that Dante is getting. The eraser tattoo shows unrequited love. How does it do that? It does this because Dante is getting an eraser tattoo that will scar and be there forever. That is a major way the author shows the theme. Another way the author shows that theme is Shay making up excuses of why not to get the eraser tattoo for Dante, she says “ I can't risk getting some kind of nasty eraser infection”.
Dante was willing to do that for her though. While Shay is giving Dante the eraser tattoo he is complaining that it hurts, she doesn't think to stop for one moment she just keeps going on with it. It makes it seem like she doesn't care about how he feels because she doesn't stop for one minute to give him a break.
ReplyDeleteThe reader started to dig deeper and thought about the story deeper. They thought that maybe it was Dante's heart that was hurting, not actually his arm. This is shown because Dante is sad that Shay is moving and doesn't know how to feel about her moving. He wants to keep their relationship alive, maybe he thinks that doing this for her will make it so she still wants to be with him. I wonder if the author wanted the readers to dig deeper into the short story.
Clearly, the theme of “Eraser Tattoo “ is Unrequited love. This is first seen when the author uses Dialogue. The author uses Dialogue to show how Shay and Dante felt in different ways. Next, the theme was created when the author used Character change. The author shows how Shay's feelings changed about Dante and their relationship. Finally, the author used figurative language to create the theme. Readers saw this when the reader realized that what Shay was doing was hurting Dante in more than one way. As a result, it is evident that the theme of “ Eraser Tattoo “ is Love may be strong but it can be Unrequited.
Tattoo Eraser” Is a short story by Jason Reynolds about Shay moving away from Dante shay is scared to leave Dante so she gives Dante an eraser tattoo so people know that he is not single. Shay becomes controlling with Dante and Dante loses his love for Shay and yet, Shay does not know. Dante does not like the tattoos because they hurt him but he tries to hide the pain since Shay is already going through a lot with moving away.
ReplyDeleteJason Reynolds used character changes to create the theme. The author explained the way Dante stared at her eyes and let Shay do what she wanted to him because he was so caught up in love. However, while the author tells the story, Dante notices that Shay is controlling. In this case, The author also believes that Shay did not like Dante much anymore and was too focused on her moving and leaving Dante that she felt the need to always tell Dante what to do, and when she soon noticed that Dante did not love her anymore she did not care. The author believes the symbolism is Dante showing his pain when Shay puts the eraser tattoo on him. “Until…. “Dante’s words caught in his throat were overtaken by how painful it was”. Symbolism for Shay is that Shay only wants to do the tattoos on Dante although, not on her. To be sure, this shows there is no love anymore between them. Although it could be argued that the theme is love, the text says it's standing up for yourself. So the theme of this short story is most definitely standing up for yourself. The author shows imagery in this story in how he points out the love between them and goes into detail on how they stare at each other including, how much Dante does for Shay and how Dante goes through pain for Shay because Shay is scared to move away. The theme of “EraserTattoo” is standing up for yourself. For example, This is first seen when the author has Dante say “The girl who used to clean my bobo’s is now hurting me..” next the theme was created when the author used an eraser tattoo to create the theme. Finally, the author used figurative language to create the theme. Therefore, Readers saw this when the author explained how deep their love was for each other in other words, how the author explained how they stared at each other. As a result, it is evidence that the theme is "Eraser tattoo" is standing up for yourself.