"Waking Up to the Reality of a Personally Fulfilling Future"
             Throughout Dillard's, An American Childhood, she describes the distinct gender roles of men and those of women in the 1950's. Dillard tells us of the explicitly different duties and responsibilities men and women had. The influence which society, specifically adults, has on Annie is extremely powerful and ultimately acts as a guiding light into her future. This influence eventually drives her to desire knowledge about why society has structured such gender roles. Annie specifically questions why women of her era allow themselves to be subservient to men, and therefore intentionally further affirm the notion that women are not as capable as men. She does not intuitively believe that she shall feel satisfied pursuing the envisioned mold society and generations past have created for the women of her time. The ultimate effect of Annie's reaction to society's pervasive influence is her realization that a future containing personal fulfillment shall only be attained through the pursuit of her own intuitive and conscious decisions and actions.
             From early childhood, the society which Dillard grows up in, attempts to shape and mold young boys and girls in hope of producing cookie cutter images of their elders. It is the adult portion of society, which holds the dominating influence over children. Dillard writes, "Here we all were, boys and girls, plunged by our conspiring elders, into a bewildering social truth that we were meant to make each others acquaintance." (87) inferring that it is the adults who are in steady control of the path children are proceeding along. Young minds are like brand new sponges; obliviously willing to soak up anything and everything that surrounds them. Children are extremely impressionable and therefore apt to do and think as their role models, adults do.
             Dillard writes about the feelings encompassing the initial experience of a c...