Questions from “Farm Girl”

1. I think the reason Hemauer wrote this essay was to show the audience how farm work has paid off in her life, how it has made her different from her peers. Some people may take this essay as a girl just telling the story of her childhood and how it has shaped her into the person she is today or as a testament to the world today and how children are going up thinking everything will be handed down to them.
2. The audience could be anyone, her teacher, classmates even boss at work however, I think the audience is really her self. I think that she wrote this because she realized that all those mornings of waking up at 5 AM and coming straight home after school have really paid off. This comes across to be in the last two paragraphs.
3. Her credibility is exhibited because before she wrote down everything that she could remember when starting the writing process. This shows that she really thought about the story that she was about to write and didn’t just sit down and her computer and type. 
4. Her responsibility to her family is to just be there to lend a helping hand. She has to remain flexible in her daily routine to help on the farm often having to sacrifice her personal passions. Really when it comes down to it if she didn’t help out on the farm the farm could have failed, then there is no telling what would have happened to the lively hood of her family. The responsibility to her readers is to show that hard work and dedication starting at an early age is extremely beneficial in the long run.
5. At some point in everyone’s life they experience times when they have nothing in common with the people that are surrounding them-especially growing up. I think that this essay allows for everyone to recall a time in their past when they were the one sitting at the lunch table with no way to give input to the conversation or were picked last for the kick ball game.  
6. As I said in question five everyone is able to relate at one point or another. This essay reminds me of when I was in middle school and I wasn’t allowed to go to the school dances if a certain amount of my homework wasn’t complete. Often I would have to sit in silence at lunch on Mondays because I didn’t know about how wild Johnny was dancing or how many slices of pizza Molly ate. But it taught me to get my work done before going out and doing what I would rather be doing...and that has really come in hand since coming to college. Because people are able to relate like this is what helps to develop interest in her essay.
7. I think the significance is that when we are growing up little do we know but we are setting up the values that are going to more than likely carry us through life. 
8. There are more than a few times in this essay where I am able to perfectly imagine the scene that has been set up. In paragraph six she talks about each of the chores the siblings have to complete, I can see each of them completing each job with out speaking, half asleep but not complaining. In paragraph ten when she talks about sitting at the lunch table and not being able to talk about the previous nights basketball practice, I can perfectly imagine little elementary children chattering and smacking their food while one little girl is lost in her own thoughts and quietly eats her sandwich or what have you. 
9. She uses dialogue to show mainly what she is thinking but also to show what the people around her are saying that she doesn’t really know about.
10. This essay goes along in a different kind of way with Annie Dillards “An American Childhood” that essay talked about how being chased by the man in the black Buick and playing football taught her to go at life full force and to not let up no matter what. They go along together because both women take a part of their childhood with them for the rest of their life and really try to stay true to lessons learned in the past.