Analysis on the poem "For Heidi with Blue Hair"

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For Heidi with Blue Hair

i) What are your impressions of the girl Heidi? Do they change at the end of the poem?

        This poem "For Heidi with Blue Hair" is about a girl, Heidi, who was sent home for dyeing her hair blue. Even though she did not break any school rules by doing so, the headmistress insisted that she was only allowed to dye her hair in the school colours, grey, white and flaxen yellow.

        In my opinion, Heidi was a rebellious girl. In many places, dyeing of hair was not seen as a very appropriate thing to do, especially for a student. Also, her hair's colour was being dyed "ultramarine on the clipped sides, with a crest of jet-black spikes on top", this was somewhat a really rebellious thing to do in my point of view, as by doing this, she became different from everybody else, not following the trend. When she "wiped your [her] eyes", she especially noted that they were also "not in a school colour". It seemed to me that she wanted to rebel against the school purposely by not doing everything the school wanted her to do. Furthermore, when her dad called the school, he said that "she discussed it [her dyeing her hair] with me first- we checked the rules." It seemed to me that she checked the school rules for loop holes in them before attempting to rebel, so the school could not do anything to her, and even discussed the matter with her parent, so the school could not say that she had done so without having parents' consent. Also in the third last stanza, she told her dad that "it cost twenty-five dollars. Tell them that it won't wash out, not even if I wanted to try." This showed that she had purposely chosen to dye her hair in a more expensive and better way, so that it would not wash out. The second half of the second sentence- "not even if I wanted to try" showed that she did not plan to even try to get the colour out of her hair; instead, she planned for it to stay on her hair for quite a long time. She had done all of these just to go against the school and her headmistress, and to do what she want while not letting the school punish her for it. Thus, in my opinion, she's a very rebellious girl.

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        My other impression about the girl Heidi was that, she would do everything to get what she wants. Her main aim here seemed to me to be dyeing her hair blue to mock the school rules. First of all, before she even dyed her hair, she had checked the school rules and even discussed the matter with her dad; to know that the school would not be able to have any reasonable reasons to hold against her when they found out about her hair, since she had not broke the school rules. After she was sent home, she cried to ...

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