Day of the Butterfly
'Day of the butterfly' is a short story written by Canadian author,'Alice Munro'. The story revolves around the theme of main character,Myra Sayla's isolated self and how the narrator,Helen, finds herself getting indulged in Myra's mikrokosmos after realising she is more than a student who is always out of place.
Munro's effort to put an emphasis on showing sympathy and behaving kindly with others is portrayed in the story very well and how she paints the guilt all over Helen's existence when she realises that she simply is not worth of Myra's kindness towards her for she never genuinely cared about her nor been generous with her.
The author's message of looking one's own self through another person's glass and releasing we all see things differently ,by putting our own self in other person's shoe and realising the shoe isn't fit for us because it's not ours ,i.e. ,not everyone is alike and that's what makes us unique and Koza's statement," By discovering the literature of our neighbors, we may also learn about ourselves" ,makes the author's point more clearer. Helen got to know that being kind to others would help her make more friends or simply genuine friends unlike all the other girls she chased and made fun of Myra with whereas when she show sympathy towards Myra ,Myra responded her gesture with kindness and also gave her a gift and suggested that she should come and play with her when she come back out of the hospital.
Though,In the end,Helen's heart is in treachery due to her past behaviour,she recalls Myra still now because she made her reflect on her own self by an act of generousity and faded away like a butterfly in the haze somewhere.