Ellie and Jacqueline: Compare and Contrast Essay

Katie Hines

10/11/2012

Block 4

Compare and Contrast Essay

Ellie and Jacqueline

            My two cousins, Ellie and Jacqueline, are sisters; they look exactly alike. Blonde hair, tiny frames, and dark blue eyes shared by both. These girls could not look more similar, and could not be more different. Ellie is happy, naïve, innocent. Jacqueline is misunderstood, angry, she has seen too much. She has been corrupted by the world too soon, while Ellie has not yet left the light. Jacqueline is young no longer; her innocence has been torn away by heartless bullies leaving her empty. Ellie does not see the horrors of the world that haunt Jacqueline; she sees the blessings in the world that are given to them both.

            When I ask Ellie what she wants to be as a grown up, she looks at me with sureness and states that, obviously, she would like to be a flower. I smile and laugh, looking over to Jacqueline, only a short year older, asking her the same. “I don’t know. Probably nothing,” she replies, and my heart breaks. This girl in front of me, the mere age of seven, seems so much older, so much sadder. Ellie furrows her little brows, her sparkling eyes filling with confusion, “You have to be something. You could be a princess, or a flower, like me.” I nod in agreement and look back to Jacqueline as she rolls her eyes in frustration, “I can’t be a flower or a princess, and neither can you.”

            Ellie adores everything pink, bright, and sparkly, just like her personality. Spunky and cute, she wears flower dresses and blue bows, almost as beautiful as her eyes. She begs me to let her raid my closet and find “grown up” clothes to wear, even though they swallow her whole. She tromps around the house in her mother’s nicest heels to show off her “model walk”. Jacqueline, she does not anymore. She wears anything black or gray like thunderous storm clouds, never doing a thing with her silken blonde hair. She throws a fit when asked to wear something presentable to Church, is shocked when told to comb her golden locks. Jacqueline is not Ellie, but she is not herself.

            Ellie is the classic child: she loves Pop Tarts and candy and chocolate milk; she hates broccoli and spinach and asparagus. Jacqueline does not eat Pop Tarts or candy or any other fun foods. She does not eat vegetables or fruits, or chicken or toast. Eating is a foreign concept to her. Jacqueline must eat at least five bites of her food before being excused, which usually results in a massive battle of stare downs to see who will crack first. Ellie is always waiting impatiently for dinner to be cooked and Jacqueline is always praying it will burn.

            Ellie and Jacqueline are sisters on the outside. One might mistake them for twins. But I know better. From the way they dress to the things they say, these girls are polar opposites, on different sides of the world. Jacqueline and Ellie are a burning inferno and an icy blizzard, a light drizzle and a hurricane. My cousins are so connected, yet so far apart. So transparent, but so oblique. So bright, but never more faded.