Book Review

Little Women, written by Alcott , is a story about four girls growing up. The girls gradually understand that money and social status fall far short of harmonious lives with family and living with dignity. They finally put aside the worldly vision to pursue what they really want instead of what others think they would want.

Little Women is similar to Gone With The Wind in certain aspects. Both of them focus on the brilliance of women in the context of the civil war, Whereas, unlike Gone With The Wind using ups and downs to engage readers’ attention, Little Women utilizes small details of life to impress readers. Rather than describing miserable experience the Marches suffering, Little Women mainly shows how the women comfort each other in the predicament. The atmosphere created by the book is so gentle and cozy that sometimes I even forget they are suffering from the war and their father lingers in the shadow of death. Certainly, such a harmonious family is mostly due to the patient and skillful guidance of mother. However, although the four little women are taught by the same mother, they do have different personality traits and pursuits of life.

In terms of characters, many reviewers pay more attention to Jo and her love story since she is always the one who promotes the development of the plot. However, as for me, I would like to lay emphasis on the comparison between Beth and Amy.

It’ s obvious that Amy and Beth are the two with the most different personalities. Beth, like an angel, cares about her family and even the poor people. She cherishes the days with her family and are always contented and grateful to the life she owns. When the night of Christmas falls, other girls are immersed in the sadness of no gift and feel unfair to their poor life. It’ s Beth who only one who are grateful to the company of the family. On the contrary, Amy always hopes to leave her home and gets the entree into the upper-class circles. At the very beginning, she was anxious to marry the rich and lead a luxurious life. Her vanity and selfishness are reflected in many small events of life, for instance, she asks her mum for limes just to show off herself and even burns the Jo’s manuscript due to some small contradictions. However, as she grows, she gradually owns some brilliant personalities like Beth, such as self-reliance and self-respect. Although she can’t be as kind as Beth, she indeed has made great progress. After pondering over and over again, she finds out that what she really wants is not simply wealth itself, but making herself to deserve it.

In reality, maybe most of us can not own the personalities as noble as Beth and hold firm beliefs to pursue what we really want at the outset, but we never are old for this like Amy. From my own perspective, our genuine pursuits of life are not innate items, but the products of our life experience. When we are at an early age, we dream of putting on gorgeous dresses like princess and getting married with prince. We may quarrel with our intimate sisters merely due to a candy but we still yearn for good manners and characters from the bottom of our hearts. It seems that we are little pilgrim. The longing for goodness and happiness is the guide that lead us though many troubles and mistakes to the peace which is a true Celestial City. Hopefully, through various kinds of challenges, each of us can finally find out what we really want and spare no effort to realize them.

2020-06-20

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