Make Lemonade Quotes

Words: 1442
Pages: 6

Learning to “Make Lemonade” Through Family
“She finds this little teensy bit of cold caked, lumpy sugar she had packed away, and she mixes it up with the juice from the lemon and some clean water from the spring they have there, and she makes lemonade. And she feeds it to her starving little ones.” This is a quote from Jolly, one of the main characters in the Virginia Euwer Wolff novel Make Lemonade. In the novel, Jolly is an uneducated, mother of two, 17 year old who has to do the best with what she has and tries her hardest. LaVaughn is a young girl who decides that it is her mission to help Jolly and her two children out of the hole they live in. LaVaughn has to do this while trying to secure an education and leave the bad area that she
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First of all, since Jolly wants her kids to have the best life possible, she will even go back to school to try to get them into a good place. After LaVaughn puts Jolly on the phone with Barbara the person who runs the daycare. Barbara convinces her that school is “her sure rights to keep her kids” (111). This passage shows that Jolly is a determined person because she willing to do anything, even go back to school and get an education. Also since shes only seventeen she is able to go back to school and have free daycare. On the other hand, Jolly never wanted to have kids in the first place, but because that is what happened to her she stuck through it and did her best. When Jolly is telling LaVaughn how she got pregnant and that it happened while she was on drugs, she say in a “now wise voice ”their father is off the face of the earth” (154). The evidence shows that after she got pregnant the father left her, and when she was very young chose to raise her kids by herself. This shows determination because raising kids at such a young age takes a lot of strength. The concluding point is, when Jolly had her kids everything in her life stopped and her kids became her number one priority, and put everything including herself behind them. In the story LaVaughn is going over how Jolly’s life could have been if she did not have any kids and presumptuously says “you’d finish school, …show more content…
In the story, each of these traits are developed by facing problems that are not easy to overcome. More importantly, though these traits are developed by learning how other family members face these problems and overcome them. Through their problems, the characters have had to find ways to achieve a normal life and because of this learned to survive on their own without constant help from their parents. In today's society having kids at a young age is not socially expected and is often frowned upon. People who run into this unfortunate event--like Jolly--have to overcome the situation without any outside support. Helping and being a good person are important because nobody can choose their circumstances, but they can choose whether or not to make