Have you ever heard of a person that can see colors for different types of music? Comparing two main characters, Melody, the main character from the book Out of my mind by Sharon M Draper, is a mute girl, she can’t walk and can see colors of types of music, like Jazz sounds like brown to her. The other Francisco, from Inside Out by Francisco Jiménez, is in an American school but he does not know how to speak english. Francisco and Melody feel different levels of power, but both have a positive relationship with their families and have similar social issues.
One thing that they are different is how they act toward power or have power. Melody is mute but she doesn’t act like she has less power, because she just stays with her parents that they respect her and she doesn’t go to school, for example when Melody’s mother protects her from the Doctor Hugely. So Melody doesn’t feel powerless. On the other hand Francisco feels powerless because he can’t speak English in an American school so he just makes one friend which is Arthur that knows a little bit of Spanish and doesn’t understand Miss Scalapino that prohibit Francisco to say in Spanish with Arthur,”But when I spoke to Arthur in Spanish and Miss Scalapino heard me, she said “NO!”
Something they have in common is the positive relationship with their families. Melody listens to music with her parents, her parents make jokes to make her laugh, her mother protects her saying that she is more intelligent than the Doctor Hugely, who is the doctor that treats her, “And what’s more, I think you are wrong—-I know you are! Melody has more brains hidden in her head than you’ll ever have, despite those fancy degrees from fancy schools you’ve got posted all over your walls!”. Francisco in the classroom dreamed that he would fly to where his father works to surprise him, so he has a good imagination about his father, “Sometimes I imagined myself flying out of the classroom and over the fields where Papá worked and landing next to him and surprising him”.
Another thing that they have in common is that both suffer from communication disabilities. Francisco’s disability is that he can’t speak English, so he can’t communicate with his classmates and doesn’t understand them, for example when Miss Scalapino read stories to the class the books that have illustrations are easier to understand, “It was easier when Miss Scalapino read to the class from a book with illustrations because I made up my own stories, in Spanish, based on the pictures”.Melody’s disability is that she can’t speak because is mute and can’t say important things, like when she wanted to show that the blocks of the toy section are dangerous, “I didn’t want the blocks. I want to tell her they were dangerous”. The difference is that Francisco doesn’t understand what others are saying, while Melody understands what other people are saying.
When comparing and contrasting the main characters of the stories Inside Out by Francisco Jiménez and Out of my mind by Sharon M Draper, it is possible to notice that they are different in power level. Francisco is powerless and Melody is not, Melody just stays with her parents so they respect her, and Francisco is powerless in school because he doesn’t speak English. They are common in their positive relationships with their families, Melody’s mother protects her from the doctor, and Francisco dream to surprise his father.The last one is a similarity is about social issues, Francisco and Melody both suffer with communication disabilities, but Francisco doesn’t understand what the other is saying, while Melody understands.
