Ella Enchanted = Amazing

I was one of those people who raised their hand timidly in class because I read the book from cover to cover in a very short amount of time, despite our equally spaced chapter reading assignments. If I could have I would have read and read until it was finished after the first few chapters. Unfortunately my daily life got in the way of my reading and I had to stop and restart several times before I was finished. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine was published in 1997 and is a contemporary version of the Cinderella tale we all know. I found the story intriguing because of Ella character and the situations she gets herself unintentionally into. For me, I related to Ella at a symbolic level. Ella's curse of always obeying represents how I felt growing up until I left home for college several years ago. It was not that I was ever forced to obey physically, like Ella, but I wanted to please my parents and teachers so much that their disapproval of anything I did or said was enough to teach me a lesson. Being a people pleasure is something that I struggle with even now, with the apparent inability to say no and to stand up for myself when I really need to. I accomplish small feats of defiance now occasionally, but I struggle to completely disregard someone else's wishes, even when they are not my own. Ella can not disobey an order because of the curse, but I rarely can to someone close to me without a guilty conscience weighing me down until I given in.

For this reason, I was intrigued by the character of Ella because of her innate defiance against something she can not control. She inspires me to pump up my defiance against what I am always asked and to decide what the best choice is for me, Erin. At the very end of the book, Ella is fighting against the curse one last time, after countless trials of trying and failing to break it. Finally, she breaks the curse and realizes that she can choose to do anything she wants! She repeats such lines as, “Myself unto myself. One. Me.” She must repeat these phases several times in the process of realizing the full meaning of the complete absence of the curse permanently. (228) I hope that I can have a moment such as this, when I realize it is okay to say no and that I can not always make every one happy!