Number Three

Analytic essay

* Setting * A characterisation of Miss Carol * The relationship between Miss Coral and Mr James * -------------------------------------------------
The main theme

Have we achieved the equality between men and women? Many of us would say we achieved that a long time ago, and that women have the same rights as men. Today the only difference would be the genitalia. But all that is happening mostly in the western world. There is still women repression but indirectly. Especially in countries like China, western men will travel to China, just to get the opportunity of living in a world where a man controls a woman.

The Short story “Number Three” is written by Anna Metcalfe in 2014. In the story we follow Miss Coral, we follow her at her work, and how she tackles certain situation, where she could lose her job. And in the end we see how she losses her job.

The Story takes place in China, where everything and everyone is busy. The story starts at a school named Number Three Middle School. It is an authentic story, and takes place where Anna has worked before in her younger life. We learn about other places, but we are only at specific place one at a time throughout the story. The social environment is very dull, as we only get to know what happens at the school, and the schools business. Therefore the setting creates a particular atmosphere, around money and business, which is very strict. We don’t really know what others are thinking about, and what there feelings are about certain things. The story is not detailed we do not know al lot about Miss Coral and her life, other than she works at school, and her dad has a job as a medical porter, and her mother as a department store janitor.

Miss Coral is very formal. Her attitude around people is very polite; she doesn’t want to harm anybody, and doesn’t want anybody to get harmed. She is more of a direct woman, than an indirect. If she can strike a deal she goes for it, but she know when not to ask at wrong times. She doesn’t have many thoughts about her work other than her boss is very strict when it comes to certain situations. She doesn’t want to disappoint anyone she works with, and also doesn’t want anyone to think badly about her, and her work. She is very thoughtful against the slums, since she was born in to hard work and labour. Her last moments at her work, she re-organised some paperwork and deleted old emails, which tells us that she fought until the last moment.

Miss Coral and Mr James relationship is business at the start, she is his “manager” and he is her “client”. Miss Coral helps him with understanding the assignments he has to perform, and helps him understand how the Chinese calendar works. He also demands a lot of answers, concerning his wagers. She holds a farewell party for Mr James. Which he is very happy about, he also states in an email, that he really liked her “pretty little face”, which could affect the way he thought and talked to Miss Coral (page 4, lines 137-140).

The main theme in my opinion is cultural differences or cultural clashes, between China and the Western world. Because there is so much Mr James doesn’t understand about China and there culture, and how the calendar works in Chinese culture. Also how the treatment is different in China than in the Western world, you can see that on page 4-5, lines 144-153. The complaint that Mr James´ managers have against the chines office where Miss Coral were his distributor, has a lot of complaints concerning matters that could not be change, no matter what Miss Coral did. She also informed Mr James about the pay he got when he had vacation, and could leave the term. Mr James also felt underrepresented at the school because he couldn’t speak Mandarin, and was unable to communicate with the authorities, which could cause problems for Mr James in the sense that if a problem came he couldn’t ask for help or get to contact with another person.