Honesty Saves Lives

         In unit 2, of my Stories class, which is called Lessons, I learned about many concepts that relate to what stories carry. In this unit, we read many fables. Through these fables, we were tasked to find the moral of the stories. In addition, we also learned how they are structured.  For my action project, I was tasked to create a fable that demonstrated a moral that was personally important to me. I decided to write about a woman named Lucinda, a hybrid between a dog and a human, who has had a hard life because she is always falling in a trap of following what others do. I was also tasked to create an illustration that displayed my main characters. When I began brainstorming, I used observations from reality and through help with my teacher, I was able to create a character that was interesting and entertaining. It also allowed me to find a moral that was special to me, which was honesty. I felt that one challenge that I faced was creating a character that can be easily understood. However, one success that I had was drawing my character effectively. Overall, I enjoyed this project.

Lucinda, a brown hybrid of a dog and a human, was a very inquisitive, but protective woman. She was given the name Lucinda because, at birth, she possessed a great deal of positivity and happiness. Her parents looked and thought about various names and their meanings, but eventually found the perfect name, which would be Lucinda. As a child, she would exhibit her personality by wearing bright colored clothes. Consequentially, she would receive attention and stares of judgment from a different species of animals such as cats. In her own neighborhood, Astoria, Oregon, she had a hard time socializing with people. She decided to go to her mother for advice. Her mother then said to her, “Why don’t you follow what the other kids are doing, that’s what I did”.

Lucinda whispered to herself with annoyance, “Yeah, but your not as expressive as I am”. Her mother then responded, “Why don’t you just do what I tell you ”. So, she proceeded to listen to her mother. In her mind, she thought about how hard it will be not to be herself. She felt that her personality and own thoughts were the most valuable thing to her. She decided to ignore those thoughts. For the next several years, she followed everyone’s opinions and abided with them. No matter what it was, whether good or bad, she followed. Lucinda eventually ended up in bad times. She trusted and depended on her friends, who took advantage of her, making her nice and pleasing personality a target. With this, only came so much negativity in her life.

Her dog instincts were able to secretly spot out weak people. From that, her cat friends encouraged her to steal from those people. They would also have an unhealthy habit of going to parties. At one party, she found a lizard, named Tristan, that was beautiful in the exterior. Focusing only on the exterior, she fell in love with him and got married. As time progressed, she got to know Tristan. Tristan was a lizard who had a manipulative and neglectful personality. He would prey on people who were weaker than him. Lucinda found herself always getting hurt and suffering due to his actions and partying.

One day, she looked at herself in a mirror and she couldn’t recognize herself. She thought in her own head, “what have I become, this is not me”. There she had an epiphany and with great confidence decided to escape her relationship with Tristan and everything around her that was negative. Her mind feeling rushed with emotions, she realized that she needed to slow down and take a breath. She realized that what her mother said to her as a child had a great impact on her. She needed to break that habit. She had to be honest to herself and think about who she really was.

A.R. Tristan and Lucinda. Photography. 2018

Over the next few months, she found herself. She is now confident enough to express her personality that she wears a bright colored pink jumpsuit. This displays who she is as a person and what she likes. She surrounds herself with colorful and beautiful places to create a world that she has always wanted to be in. Now that she is an adult she is able to do that and not be criticized. In addition, she has never been in love again, as she is protecting herself from being hurt again. She also recognized that she despises her mother From self-reflecting and being honest to herself, she was able to find her own personality again. She now values honesty as something extremely important and necessary in life.  She recognized that honesty saved her life.

A.R. Lucinda. Photography. 2018