Butterflies
2a: Culture Clashes

Patricia Grace (1937- ) is a Māori, born in Wellington, New Zealand. She has written children’s books and several novels and short stories. Butterflies appeared in her Electric City and Other Stories (1987).
(Quote: the handout, text 2)
This short story tells about two farmers, and their granddaughter, which whom they are very proud of going to school. It starts with the grandmother plaiting the girl’s hair, telling her to “listen to the teacher” and “do as the teacher say”. Further on, the grandfather tells their neighbour proudly “our granddaughter goes to school, she lives with us now, and she’s clever.”
When the girl gets home, she tells about the story she wrote about butterflies and her killing all of them. Her grandparents ask what the teacher thought of it, the teacher says butterflies are beautiful creatures, and that one does not kill butterflies. Then the grandfather tells the girl “Because you see, your teacher, she buy all her cabbages from the supermarket and that’s why”
The author has written from a third person point of view, and we observe everything from the outside when reading it. The teacher in this story is more in the background, and we do not get to see her perspective other than what the granddaughter is telling about her.
Looking deeper into this text, we can assume that the teacher is a white person, with power, and good wealth, she “buys all her cabbages from the supermarket”. She does not have to grow her own cabbages; therefore, she neither has to struggle with butterflies laying eggs in her garden. As for the farmers, the butterflies cause damage, and that is why they do not look at butterflies as these “beautiful creatures” the teacher talks about. So if the story was from the teacher’s point of view, we would maybe look at the grandparents as dumb or morbid.
This is just a small contrast