Sunny Youth Journal

“The Moustache” by Robert Cormier is a interesting story.

When the story opens, we meet the narrator, Mike, who is about to set out for a visit to Lawnrest to see his grandmother. His sister, Annie, is supposed to go with him, but is sick. Mike is being given an inspection by his mother, who is checking out his hair and his relatively new moustache. The narrator tells us he decided to grow a moustache to prove a point that he could, but he’d since grown to like it. His mother says the moustache is costing him money, simply because it makes him look older than his 17 years. Even the movie attendant had charged him the full ticket price for him and his girlfriend, Cindy, at a recent show.

The narrator, Mike, who is named for his grandfather, is about to set off. His mother says, ”Your grandmother probably won’t even recognize you,” but he heads out.

He visits his grandmother, and she mistakes him as her husband, who died a while ago. She said she regretted accusing him of cheating, and has lived with that regret. Mike just plays along with it, not knowing whats going on. In the end, Mike manages to leave, and when he gets back, he shaves his mustache.

The story was short, and I couldn’t really find a meaning to it. Overall, it was pretty interesting and funny that a lot of people mistake Mike as a adult, even though he is only a teen

There are almost eight billion different people on planet Earth, each with their own characteristics and features. During one’s life, they might tend to go off track and follow in the footsteps of someone else’s life. Although exactly copying the life of a successful person seems positive, it comes with many consequences. The short story The Moustache by Robert Cormier is about a boy named Mike who wants to look grown-up. When he visits his mentally ill grandma with his mustache on, his grandma mistakes her grandson as her husband. Mike ended up having to experience a very uncomfortable conversation. One should not try to be someone else because it is not why they were put into the world, and it can lead up to consequences.

Each and every human was born for a purpose, and that was to make a change. The life of someone should not be to hide in the shadow of another person but to live life fully as oneself. A TedTalk spoken by Caroline McHugh highlighted the importance of being oneself and not comparing oneself to others. She stated how being oneself is the thing many people fail to achieve in life. Successful people are those who realized who they truly are, not those who followed in the footsteps of other successors. As for Mike, he wanted to look mature, hence him wearing the mustache. His mustache hid who he truly was, which in turn made him “someone else”. His faulty choice to not be himself lead him into a pit of trouble. Everyone on planet Earth was born different and unique, but some turn the wrong way in order to become someone else.

Not only does being someone else limit one’s potential of life, but it also comes with a handful of consequences. When Mike visited his grandma’s nursing home, she mistakens him as her husband. This was because Mike’s grandpa also had a mustache and was named Mike. Since the grandma was mentally ill and her time was coming, Mike’s only choice was to go along faking to be someone else. This is just one of many dangers of being someone else. As previously stated, being someone else can also erase the success from oneself. Being someone else is like losing confidence. When one thinks they do not have the ability to succeed, they often tend to copy another person. This is the mistake millions make, which in return robs their lives.

The greatest achievement of life is to truly be oneself. Being oneself is the sole reason one was born into Earth and can bring one success. The many who hide in the shadows of others end up living lives far worse than they could have if they were themselves. Alfred Hitchcock, an influential film maker once asked himself, “If I won’t be myself, who will?”

A person has gone insane. They start attacking innocents on the street, and soon the news spreads. Police quickly attain, and the maniac is captured. Put in solitary confinement. It’s the worst prison to be in, with the highest security, and each prisoner is separated, locked into tiny cells to keep havoc and atrocities from happening.

For years, these so-called “criminals” are forced to stay inside their cells. As time passes, they get bored. But mere boredom is only the first stage. To humans, social interaction is not only a desire; it’s a necessity, essential, like food we consume, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. Without these, we can’t survive. Socializing gives life a new taste, something to look forward to in life. What happens if you take away that privilege?

Recently, due to the coronavirus pandemic, a shelter in place order has kept us in our houses. Staying at home might be a new experience, but sooner or later, it will turn into a habituation. At first, we might think, “Now I can spend more time with family!” But as this process continues, we gradually change from that attitude to a “meh.” Likewise, solitary confinement is somewhat similar to that. However, it’s a thousand times worse. After a while, people stuck in solitary confinement start losing some eye sight due to constantly staring at a close space. They’ll gradually adapt and get nearsighted. Others try to social with other people by bellowing through the shower drains, and eventually start losing their voices. These conditions may sound bad already, but there’s even worse. With no social for months and months, people start losing their mind. Many start losing the consciousness of actually being a person. Others start banging there heads on the wall just to feel pain in order to remind themselves that they exist.

If people locked up in solitary confinement are even willing to harm themselves, this must mean that this type of custody, this kind of imprisonment must be even worse than physical pain. It is the worst kind of pain: the torture of boredom. No person should deserve this type of punishment. All people are born with a good heart.

Although solitary confinement is a cruel punishment, we should seek for the bright, and everything is balanced. There are many cruel things in the world, many cruel people who do very evil things. But if we understand their perspective, we might see the good in them. To step in someone else’s shoes, stand on the aspect of the other side, is a very good quality to have. If we stand in the point of view of the prisoners in solitary confinement, we will also feel the pain that they have. Then we will realize why solitary confinements shouldn’t be a punishment.

Relating to our own lives, everyone does bad things. You might have a quarrel with a friend, or an argument with your siblings. But if you look to the other side and empathize, all conflicts may be resolved faster. And any consequences afterwards should be just enough for the person to learn their lesson, it shouldn’t exceed the right amount of punishment.

In her Ted talk about ADX Florence, a supermax prison outside of Denver, Colorado, Laura Rovner talks about the effects that solitary confinement has on people. Like her, I believe that the people in the prison, no matter what they have done, should be treated better.

People might argue that this is the only way to keep prisoners contained, but it’s not. There’s a maximum security prison in Norway called Halden Prison, and it has none of those features. Every prison cell is 10 square metres(110 square feet), and has a television, desk, and fridge. In the common area, there is a kitchen where inmates can cook their own food, and a living room with a video game console. Inmates are locked inside their rooms for twelve hours a day, but they are encouraged[read:paid with 53 korner($9)]to leave their rooms the other twelve hours. The prison offers woodworking, cooking, and music classes to the inmates. The prison also has a library and a gym with everything you’ll normally expect at a normal library and prison. The guards in the prison are also normally unarmed and are encouraged to spend time with the inmates. This is called dynamic security, where the government tries to prevent bad intentions, rather than bad behaviour, and it works. The recidivism rate, the rate in which someone will commit the same crime again, is 50% times lower than traditional prisons once the inmates are released. It also saves Norwegian law enforcement and the Norwegian government more money because there is a lower crime rate and less people reliant on government aid programs.

Prisons are places where people are supposed to be re-educated and corrected from their past acts, and it has been proven that dynamic security prisons work. We’ve already taken away inmates freedoms by locking them up in jail, we don’t need to take away their will to live as well.

The main character is a 17 year old boy named Mike. He grew a mustache and kept it, because he thought it would make him seem older and more mature, even though it had negative side effects. He gets charged full price at the theater, and because of this, doesn’t have enough money to take his girlfriend out to eat after they watch a movie. She doesn’t really like the mustache either. Mike tries really hard to be mature, maybe even too hard. He wants others to think of him as an adult and treat him like he’s not a kid. His actions throughout the story prove this.

During his drive to see his sick grandma, he wants to use his dad’s fast car, and go 75 miles per hour on the highway. But he thinks that speeding isn’t mature, so he uses an old station wagon and only goes 50 miles per hour on the highway. This further shows that Mike wants to seem grown up. While he’s in the hospital room with is grandma, she hallucinates and thinks that he is her husband. He plays along and doesn’t correct her because his mother told him to be gentle with his grandmother. He doesn’t want to upset her, and seem childish or immature.

At the end of his visit, he wants to tell his grandmother that he’s her grandson, not her husband. He even considers continuing pretending to be her husband, but he doesn’t say anything. He just silently leaves. On his way home, he drives 80 miles per hour on the highway. He blasts rock music at maximum volume. When he gets home, he didn’t tell his parents how his visit went. He goes upstairs, and shaves off his mustache. By taking these actions, he embraces his immaturity. But by embracing his immaturity and ending his quests to seem mature, he becomes more mature. He realizes being immature has its perks, and is going to make use of them while he still can.

Everyone has regrets, ranging from not being fast enough to grab that last chip from the bag to doing something terrible and getting someone else blamed for it. Most of the time, you can make up with the person you wronged, and you can go on with your life. However, in the short story The Moustache, it explores the feeling of guilt when the person you wronged is long dead. A theme in this story is how unresolved guilt and regret has a habit of sticking around in your mind for a very long time.

In the story, Mike goes on a regular trip to Lawnrest, his grandmother’s nursing home. When he gets there, his grandmother appears happy to see him, and calls him by his name. Soon however, he realizes that she thought he was her husband, who Mike was named after. He realizes she recognized him as her long dead husband because of the moustache he grew. Mike’s grandmother recounts how she falsely accused him of cheating with another woman, and how that damaged their relationship in later years. She apologizes, and said she didn’t apologize before because of her pride. After this ordeal, she seemed to be tired out, and goes to sleep. After this, Mike goes home and shaves his moustache.

In this story, a reader can clearly see the theme of holding on to regret, with the grandmother still feeling guilty forty years after the offended was dead. Back when her husband was still alive, she was too proud to say sorry, and because he died before she apologized, she never got the chance. Even though her mental state has deteriorated to the point when she mistakes her grandson for her husband, her guilt still remains. Only when she apologized and got the forgiveness of who she thought was her husband could she finally be at peace, symbolized by her falling asleep.

A main point in The Moustache is how you should apologize when you still can, or the regret might stay with you for your whole life. The grandmother was lucky in that she had the opportunity to apologize to her husband, if only in her mind, allowing her to let go of her guilt. Most other people wouldn’t get that opportunity.

People in solitary confinement, or ADX, are known to be a place where “bad” people are housed.”Bad” people meaning that they had countless murders, are terrorists, and more. Outside of the prison may look nice and sweet and look like a nice suburban middle school with a nice lobby, but what’s happening inside the prison, is much, much worse than what you see on the outside.

Inside the prison, it is dirty and isn’t maintained properly from the inmates. The inmates have little bathrooms and have rude attitudes. There are two examples of messy attitudes in the prison, the first one is rubbing feces on their faces. The second is attempting suicide and cutting themselves. Both of these examples are both from the effect of being trapped in such a miserable environment causing them depression. While these actions are being done, police don’t seem to care about them. This could lead to many deaths each year in jail and will have a negative effect on humanity.

Prisoners in ADX live in cells that are the size of a small bathroom. They can’t talk to any one, they usually don’t see anyone. Even though this seems fine, but after a few years, problems would come out. Do the prisoners deserve to be treated like this. I think this is not because it could cause both physical and mental issues. So people should talk to the US government about this.

I think the prisoners don’t need to be tortured with solitary confinement because it would cause both physical and mental issues. Some prisoners that stayed in the ADX for a while, and when they come out, they could hardly see things in front of them. This is because its a long time since they have seen something far away. Also after the prisoners come out, some of them lost their voice, because of long time of not talking. Not only did staying isolated cause physical issues for the prisoners, it also caused mental problems. After staying a long time alone, people tend to not want to talk with other people. So many of the prisoners have mental problems.

Even though some people say that the prisoners should be tortured. I think that is not true because the making them sick is not such a good way to punish the prisoners. Though some prisoners did things bad I still think no one should be tortured like this. Its not only torturing someone’s body, but also someone’s mind. People should not allow this kind of torture to happen, solitary confinement is too harsh.

Why is mustache spelled wrong in the title?

The Moustache by Robert Cormier is about a young teen who wants to become more mature so he grows a mustache. He goes to visit his grandmother and on his way he envisions himself going really fast but decides against it as he thinks that wouldn’t be mature. His grandmother was very happy to see him since she thinks that he is her husband as he also had a mustache. The grandmother was hallucinating which helped her think that Mike was her husband also named Mike. After he visits her he realizes that he didn’t want to be mature, but the ironic thing is, is that in realizing that he didn’t want to become more mature he became more mature.

In the beginning Mike wanted to grow up and stop being a teenager. He wanted to become mature as soon as possible. In example he wanted to go really fast in the car but doesn’t as he thinks that mature people would do that. He visits his grandmother who is hallucinating and he he plays along with it for a bit before trying to tell her who he is and eventually just leaving. He leaves the building realizing that he didn’t want to grow up.

During the car ride home he goes really fast as he wanted to do in the beginning of the story. He also played loud rock music to listen to something. Mike in realizing that he shouldn’t want to grow up and he wanted to stay a teenager, ironically he actually became more mature. In a kind of last ditch attempt I guess to try to stay a teen he shaves his mustache which made him look and feel a bit more mature.

In conclusion after going to visit his hallucinating grandmother he decided to shave his mustache and try to stay a kid a bit longer. The mustache showed that he wanted to grow up and become mature much faster than he should’ve and once he shaves it off the story shows that he realizes this fact of wanting to stay young a bit longer. But sadly, in the end, by realizing that he wants to stay a teen and shaving off his mustache he actually becomes more mature than he was before.

Everyone gets nervous when met with an important event. In the story “The Moustache” by Robert Cormier, when Mike is going to visit his grandmother who is currently sick in a hospital, he is first nervous that she won’t recognize him. He has heard from his mother that she sometimes forgets who people are.

During his talk with his grandmother, he is relieved that she recognizes him. However, more worries quickly arise when she then mistakes him for her late husband. She begs him to forgive her and that makes Mike start thinking if everyone has something to forgive someone else for.

Mike is nervous about this meeting so when things start going downhill instead of focusing on his grandmother, his mind goes to the worries that could happen or could not happen. Therefore, after he leaves the hospital, he turns the radio up and speeds across the road. He does this because he is trying to escape from his thoughts.

Naturally, Mike should be nervous when meeting his sick grandmother who might have forgotten who he was. He should still try to focus on more positive things than the negative possibilities. At the end of the story when he looks at his parents, he becomes unsure of what people are carrying, guilt or love? Instead of worrying about bad things like guilt, embrace more positive things like love.