Introduction: In this abbreviated story Initiation, it explains about how a girl’s trying to fit in as the norm by being in an all exclusive club. This story suggest that conformity and having friends inhibit as a valuable deed, however having an individual identity and being an individual is stronger. Why do people decide to deviate from the norm?
Body Paragraphs: The protagonist in this story is Millicent. An average girl who no one actually notices. One day, a sorority group decides to send her an invitation allowing her to join, but she must past their initiation test first. At first, Millicent is ecstatic, and proud that she can finally be a segment of society and fit in, but slowly yet surely, Millicent finds out that being an individual can offer furthermore. Millicent’s desire to differentiate what the group undertake reflects the idea of hesitation, how Millicent is now wondering if she honestly wants to be a member of this group.
Millicent is constantly considering the idea of not joining the sorority, and visualizing them as “pale grey brown birds in a flock, all exactly alike”. This analogy of conformity is unquestionably strong, considering in a sorority, every girl is alike, with shallow personalities and beautiful exteriors. Millicent longing people to recognize her as her true self, not an exact copy of all the other girls. During the initiation test she received a dare telling her to hustle into a bus and ask everybody on it what they ate for breakfast. She met a weird fellow on the bus that after being asked what he ate for breakfast. He talked of heather birds described as mythological moors that fly all day long singing wild and sweet in the sun. Millicent broke out into spontaneous laughter. She felt wonderful feeling some sort of comradeship towards the stranger. Later on in the story, towards the end of the story Millicent is deciding between becoming a Heather bird or an ordinary bird that follows the flock. The ordinary birds symbolize the girls who go through the humiliation of initiation and be remodeled into members of the sorority.