“The Haircut”

1. The time is a month before graduation and the summer, the place is Mom’s house and
Grandparent’s farmhouse, and the atmosphere is tense or harsh. The atmosphere is tense/harsh
because the protagonist’s dad is in the army which means that her house is all about discipline.
The overall settings are important to the story because without it, we wouldn’t know how to feel
about what’s happening in the story.
2. The central conflict of this story is the protagonist hanging out with her friends while figuring
herself out and her parents disliking her hanging out with her friends. Her parents are putting
down her friends and calling them “bad influences.” This is because she is beginning to not
follow her parent’s rules and lying to them more about what she’s doing when she isn’t home.
This conflict is resolved by her going to her grandparent’s farmhouse over the summer and
meeting someone new that she is interested in.
3. In The Haircut, the Manuela Soares presents the idea that you don’t need to look for your true
self and that your true self finds you instead. This is because near the end of the story, the
protagonist understands something about herself when she wasn’t trying to look for it.
4. The point of view this story is told in is first person. The protagonist is using pronouns such as I,
me, my, myself, we, etcetera. The disadvantage of this perspective is that we can’t know what
the other characters think about the protagonist. One important perspective that I think would
be very important to know about would be the mom’s perspective since her opinions are very
strong towards the protagonist.

“The Last Good Night”

1. The time is a year after the protagonist’s older brother was sent to their uncle’s farmhouse in
Ohio, the place is the protagonist’s house, and the atmosphere is gloomy and depressing. The
atmosphere is gloomy and depressing because the protagonist is thinking about the times when
he was younger and happy with his older brother who was like a best friend to him and now his
older brother left the house after doing a lot of bad stuff.
2. The central conflict of this story is the protagonist’s brother leaving home and not coming back.
The protagonist’s brother left home because he started doing bad things and was beyond their
mother’s control, beyond anyone’s control, which led to their mom having to send him to their
uncle’s farmhouse.
3. In The Last Good Night, Todd James Pierce presents the idea that drugs can ruin a person’s life
and that person’s family and friends’ lives all because of the way they can change a person’s way
of thinking when they are in a situation that needs proper thinking to do properly.
4. I think what the protagonist’s mother means is that the protagonist’s brother listened to his dad
more and followed more in his footsteps than the protagonist did. The protagonist’s brother
played football, which was their father’s favourite sport, and also saying things that their father
told him. The protagonist is different from his brother by the person they both were raised by,
their age gap, and what they chose to do with their lives. The protagonist’s brother was raised
mostly by their father and the protagonist was raised by his brother and mother. The protagonist
is younger than his brother since his brother is the one who taught him how to do most stuff like
how to protect himself and how to play basket ball and stuff like that. His brother chose to do
drugs and crimes while the protagonist avoided that kind of stuff.