Fantasy/Reality of Tularecito

3 Pages 712 Words

Franklin looked into Tularecito's “mirror” and saw what Tularecito was. The Pastures views come from several directions. While one teacher sees Tularecito as a dog, needing to be trained, the other sees him as an idiot savant, needing only to be pushed into harmless fantasy. This leads a third view of Tularecito, one of a simple minded killer that needs to be locked up for his own good. Tularecito is viewed as less than human from the start. His name means "little frog", and his physical disabilities are seen by all, causing fear.
As Steinbeck tells his story, it is obviously full of metaphors on the basic belief of our society that everything must be the same and reasonable at the same time. Tularecito should never have gone to school. He would have been happy living at home, simple as he was. In the end society takes Tularecito and makes him a monster. Since monsters are not allowed into human society, Tularecito goes looking for a different society that he does belong to, living with the gnomes. Unfortunately this society exists only in his mind, but to his mind it makes sense for he has no perception of reality to fantasy. He searches for a world of fantasy, and in his efforts, he creates a hole. “He studied the hold for a moment and then began to push dirt back into the whole with the side of his foot” (Steinbeck, 54). When this hole is covered up, it confirms Tularecito's belief in fantasy. There is only one problem with this. Tularecito believes that he created the hole and should not be destroyed. With school, work or his own fantasies, when something made by his sweat, his hand is destroyed he defends it the only way he knows how, through violence.
“The fourth grade struggled out, seized erasers and begun to remove the animals to make room for their numbers. They has not make tow sweeps when Tularecito charged….. Miss Martin aided by the whole school, could not hold him down.�...