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Entry 8: Ms. Gruwell
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Freedom Writers Diary, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race, Ethnicity, and Tolerance
Education and Healing
Family and Home
Violence, War, and Death
Summary
Analysis
This student is one of the forty-five students chosen to fly to New York, sponsored by the company GUESS?, which explained its decision by explaining that the company’s founders are Jewish and were forced to flee Europe during World War II.
The company’s desire to sponsor the students demonstrates the founders’ desire to use the horrific experience of World War II as a catalyst to make the world a better, more tolerant place.
Themes
Despite this student’s excitement, she notes that her father does not care at all about her achievements, and has not offered to help in any way. Throughout her life, she feels that her father never delivered on his promises. Receiving help form GUESS? reminds her of her childhood, during which she compensated for the lack of her father’s presence by trying to be accepted by her peers. She felt a desperate need to wear the designer clothes that everybody else had. Now that she is part of the Freedom Writers, material things are no longer central to her life, for she has realized that only love makes her truly happy.
This student’s search for love has undergone various stages, but the most impactful result of this search has been the Freedom Writers, who have allowed her to focus on what makes her truly happy in life. While she still does not have the one thing she so desperately wants—her father’s love—she knows that she does not need it to succeed in life, and that she can rely on her own achievements to feel proud and admired by other people.
Themes
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