PLOT The story “ Lilies of Yesterday’ revolves around a 12-year-old girl named Lily and how she goes about in her everyday life. The beginning of the plot is simply an introduction. She is at the point of her life where she is between a child and a young adult. She lives with her mother, her aunt Maria, and her older sister Mercedes.
We can see her characteristics as a child for she refuses to wake up early and suffers punctuality, she would not allow her sister and her aunt to color her cheeks because her mother was watching, she is so innocent and excited of the fact of growing up.
The world was her playground. The rising action of the plot could be the part where she starts imagining how lovely it would be to grow up. Her idea of ‘ growing up” is being able to be yourself and being someone else at the same time by the application of make-up thus looking different.
She would be able to wear high- led shoes and look like the glamorous women she sees. She would be supreme, high with authority, and would have the ability to teach boys. The conflict in the story IS Man versus Self. Lily is somewhat at war with herself.
She Gorilla – page 5 Ants to be prettified yet she refuses.
She tries to voice out her complaints to her mother but her problems are not seen to be of such importance. She gets horrified to find a pimple on her face, destroying her school girl look – the very first mark of her becoming of youth. She wants to tell her sister and her aunt but they are too busy talking that she decides not to. Being young, people did not take her that seriously. She fears the physical changes adolescence can bring her (like her first pimple) yet she is very eager to grow up.
She suffers the inconvenience of being a child.
Too bung but too old. The climax of the story takes place when she felt violated by the Nay her friends treated love. Love is a delicate and precious thing for our protagonist. It was as if her innocence was broken. Love, for her, was not to be discovered among strangers, yet her mouth slipped and her friends were laughing knowing that her parents made out. Suddenly, the world became confusing to her.
She could not understand what love is, she has broken a bond of friendship, and she Nas feeling pain.
Things go mellow as she decides to confess her shortcoming in the protagonist has grown into a young lady. She had started her very first cycle as a Oman. THEME The main theme of the story is about childhood. It is very evident as we see the protagonist enjoying the perks of being a child while excitingly waiting to grow up.
It can also be about the coming of age. She was torn away from her innocence and realized that growing up was not always rainbows and butterflies but it can also bring in pain.
