The Cutting of My Long Hair | CBSE Class 12 English Notes

This note covers Zitkala-Sa and her childhood account, the sequence of her first day, the dining-room rules, the meaning of long hair, the characters, resistance and humiliation, themes, narrative methods, key quotations and vocabulary.

Who is the author, and what kind of text is this?

Zitkala-Sa and her writing

Zitkala-Sa was the pen name, or name used for writing, of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, a Native American woman born in 1876. She was talented and educated, and lived amid severe prejudice against Native American culture and women.

Prejudice means an unfair judgement against people because of their identity. In 1900, she began publishing articles criticising the Carlisle Indian school. Her writing challenged dogma, meaning beliefs treated as unquestionable, and her life opposed oppression, the unjust use of power over others.

A remembered childhood experience

The Cutting of My Long Hair is the first account in Memories of Childhood. It is autobiographical: the writer recounts an experience from her own life. She looks back on the treatment she suffered as a child separated from her mother.

The adult writer presents the child's immediate experiences of noise, unfamiliar rules, fear and resistance. This combination allows the account to preserve a child's distress while showing why the treatment was an attack on her dignity, or sense of personal worth.

The account belongs to a unit about women from marginalised communities, groups pushed away from positions of social power. Its central conflict concerns a Native American child's encounter with practices imposed by a more powerful culture. Her haircut becomes the most painful event of that first day.

What happens in the story, section by section?

Summary: arrival and bewilderment

The narrator's first day in the land of apples is bitterly cold. Snow covers the ground and the trees are bare. A breakfast bell, shoes striking the floor and voices speaking an unfamiliar language surround her. She feels trapped and struggles inwardly against lost freedom.

A white-haired woman follows the children as they join girls marching into the dining room. The narrator's blanket has been removed, leaving her deeply uncomfortable. The other Indian girls wear stiff shoes and close-fitting dresses; the small girls have sleeved aprons and hair cut short.

The boys enter through the opposite door. The narrator recognises the three boys who arrived with her party and thinks they look as uncomfortable as she feels. Their presence gives her familiar faces, but it does not remove her distress.

Summary: the breakfast signals

At the first small bell, the pupils pull out their chairs. The narrator assumes that she should sit, but everyone else remains standing. As she begins to rise, the second bell signals sitting, and she has to return awkwardly to her chair.

A man speaks while the others lower their heads over their plates. Looking around, she notices a woman watching her closely and drops her eyes. After the third bell, everyone begins eating with knives and forks. She cries instead, afraid to attempt anything further.

Summary: warning and resistance

Late that morning, her friend Judewin warns her that their long hair will be cut. Judewin knows a few English words and has overheard the woman discussing it. The warning is terrible because the girls associate cropped hair with painful meanings learned from their mothers.

Judewin believes that they must submit because the adults are stronger. The narrator refuses. She slips away unnoticed, climbs the stairs and enters a dim room containing three white beds. She hides beneath a bed in the corner farthest from the door.

Summary: discovery and the ending

Women and girls search for her. She remains silent, even though she knows Judewin is also searching. Someone raises the curtains, filling the room with light. She does not know what makes the searchers look beneath the bed, but they discover and drag her out.

She kicks and scratches, yet is carried downstairs and tied to a chair. She cries and shakes her head until the scissors cut off a braid. Then her spirit fails. She longs for her mother, receives no comfort and feels reduced to an animal driven by a herder.

How do the setting and dining-room rules unsettle the narrator?

A world that feels hostile

The setting, meaning the surroundings in which an event occurs, is introduced through cold and noise. Snow, bare trees, a harsh bell and clattering shoes establish the child's discomfort. The unfamiliar language adds another barrier: she hears people around her but cannot understand their speech.

Her sense of being trapped begins before anyone physically ties her to a chair. The opening describes inward struggle within an overwhelming environment. Later, the actual restraint gives a physical form to the loss of freedom she already feels.

Clothing also makes the setting painful. Her blanket has been taken away, and she regards the other girls' tight clothes as immodest, or insufficiently covering the body. She says they seemed not to care. This records her impression rather than certain knowledge of their feelings.

Why the bells matter

The narrator understands breakfast as eating by formula, meaning a meal governed by a fixed sequence of actions. The routine seems orderly to those who know it, but it exposes her uncertainty. The problem is not a lack of intelligence; she has not understood the signals.

Being watched makes her uncertainty more painful. She wonders why the woman is observing her so closely. Her crying shows the emotional result of repeated confusion: an ordinary activity becomes something she is afraid to attempt.

Why is cutting her long hair such a serious injury?

The meanings taught at home

The threatened haircut matters because hair carries meanings within the narrator's community. Shingled hair means hair cut close or short. She and Judewin have learned from their mothers that only unskilled warriors captured by an enemy had their hair shingled by that enemy.

She also explains that short hair was worn by mourners, people grieving a death, and shingled hair by cowards. These associations make the planned haircut frightening and humiliating. It does not represent a simple change in appearance to her.

The details must remain distinct. The teaching about captured warriors concerns hair cut by an enemy. The account separately identifies mourners with short hair and cowards with shingled hair. Combining all three into a general rule about everyone with short hair loses the precise distinctions.

Identity and control over the body

Cultural identity means a person's connection with the practices and values of a community. Here, the child's understanding of her hair comes from her mother and her people. Cutting it against her will disregards both her feelings and those learned meanings.

The haircut also removes her ability to decide what happens to her body. She tries to escape, resists discovery, cries and shakes her head. The adults proceed by restraining her. Her refusal is therefore clear throughout the episode.

The removal of the blanket and the replacement of her soft footwear prepare for this final injury. Each change separates her from something familiar. The haircut is the point at which this accumulating treatment breaks her spirit and makes her feel marked with cowardice.

The title directs attention to this decisive act. The word “my” connects the hair with the narrator herself. Read in this way, the title emphasises that something personally and culturally significant is taken from a child who actively objects.

What do the main characters reveal about power and care?

Zitkala-Sa as the child narrator

The narrator, the voice telling the experience, is sensitive to sounds, clothing, looks and changes in routine. She feels frightened and confused, but she also recognises an injury to her dignity. Her distress does not prevent her from making a deliberate choice to resist.

Her courage appears in several actions: rejecting submission, escaping unnoticed, remaining silent under the bed, and kicking and scratching when found. Courage here does not mean an absence of fear. She trembles at approaching footsteps while continuing to refuse cooperation.

Her eventual loss of spirit makes her vulnerability clear. She is a child facing people who can overpower her physically. The ending does not cancel her earlier courage; it shows what force can do to someone who has already resisted.

Judewin as a friend

Judewin understands a few words of English, enough to recognise the threat and warn her friend. This limited understanding matters because language otherwise leaves the narrator uncertain about what is happening around her. Judewin provides information that the narrator cannot obtain for herself.

Judewin advises submission because she believes the adults are stronger. Her response differs from the narrator's without proving that she approves of the haircut. She later joins the search, but that fact alone does not establish that she betrays the hiding place.

The adults and the absent mother

The white women associated with the routine, watching and haircut represent authority, the power to direct others. Women and girls participate in the search. The narration does not give every searcher an individual identity, and the adults' private thoughts are not explained.

The mother is physically absent but emotionally central. Her teaching explains why cutting hair is painful. At the end, the narrator remembers her mother's habit of reasoning quietly with her, contrasting familiar care with the absence of comfort after the haircut.

These relationships create two different experiences of adult power. Remembered maternal care involves explanation and reassurance. The treatment at the school involves rules the child does not understand and physical force when she refuses. This contrast gives the ending much of its sadness.

How does the narrator resist, and why does her resistance fail?

From decision to action

Resistance means opposing an action or power imposed on someone. The narrator's resistance begins with a spoken refusal after Judewin's warning. She does not claim that she can defeat the adults. She insists that she will struggle before they force her to submit.

Her escape follows an opportunity rather than a carefully planned route. She leaves when nobody notices and moves along the upstairs hall without knowing where she is going. Finding an empty room, she makes use of its dimness and the space beneath a bed.

She keeps resisting through silence. Voices call her name, and she knows her friend is searching too, but she does not answer. Her silence is purposeful in this situation: speaking would reveal her position and end her attempt to avoid the haircut.

Fear, discovery and force

The approaching footsteps and excited voices increase her fear. When the curtains are raised, the room suddenly becomes bright. She cannot explain what leads the searchers to look under the bed. Preserving that uncertainty keeps the account within the limits of what she remembers.

After discovery, resistance becomes physical. She kicks and scratches while being dragged out, then cries and shakes her head when tied to the chair. The adults' greater strength defeats these actions. The haircut follows restraint, not an agreement from the child.

The outcome is a failure to prevent the haircut, but the struggle still reveals her refusal to accept its meaning quietly. A reading focused only on the final defeat would miss her active opposition. A reading that calls the ending a victory would ignore her anguish.

What themes and message emerge from the episode?

Theme 1: cultural identity under pressure

A theme is a central idea developed through events and language. Here, the treatment of clothing, footwear and hair shows how unfamiliar practices can be imposed on a child. Her own cultural understanding receives no effective protection when the adults decide what will happen.

This can be read as forced assimilation, pressure to abandon a community's practices and conform to those of a more powerful group. The term describes an interpretation of the actions shown: the narrator cannot retain familiar forms of dress or refuse the haircut.

The account makes that pressure personal. Instead of explaining it through an abstract argument, the narrator shows embarrassment without her blanket, confusion at breakfast and anguish when her braid is cut. The reader encounters the injury through her feelings.

Theme 2: resistance and unequal power

Judewin and the narrator both recognise the adults' power but respond differently. One advises submission; the other insists on struggling. The contrast shows how the same threat can produce different responses, without making obedience proof of approval or resistance proof of likely success.

The narrator's actions show that a child can recognise humiliation and oppose it. Her failure to stop the haircut exposes the inequality between her will and the adults' physical power. The account separates being overpowered from freely accepting what is done.

Theme 3: dehumanisation and lost dignity

Dehumanisation means treating people as though their individual feelings and humanity do not matter. The closing comparisons with a puppet and animals express this injury. The child feels moved and controlled by others instead of being treated as a person whose wishes deserve attention.

The haircut is therefore part of a wider experience. Staring, being tossed about, compulsory changes and restraint accumulate into a sense of helplessness. Her final image extends beyond personal embarrassment to the feeling of being one among many controlled children.

Theme 4: the need for compassion

Compassion means concern for another person's suffering. The child's longing for her mother brings this need into focus. She remembers quiet reasoning and care, yet receives neither comfort nor a patient response in her anguish.

The episode suggests that care requires attention to a person's meanings, feelings and refusal. Physical control can produce outward compliance while inflicting inward harm. Its message is grounded in the contrast between the adults' power to alter her appearance and their failure to comfort her.

How do language and narrative methods convey her distress?

First-person narration and sensory imagery

First-person narration tells events through the speaker's own “I”. It gives direct access to what Zitkala-Sa notices, thinks and feels. It also limits knowledge: she can describe the search, but she cannot explain why someone decides to look under the bed.

Sensory imagery uses language associated with sight, sound, touch and other senses. The opening emphasises harsh sounds and cold surroundings. Later details include the dim room, sudden light, cold scissors and the sound of cutting. These details make fear immediate rather than merely named.

Personification and comparisons

Personification gives a non-human thing a human quality. Giving the breakfast bell a voice makes its sound seem forceful and intrusive. The scissors are described as gnawing, an animal-like action that makes the cutting feel painfully aggressive.

A simile compares things using words such as “like” or “as”. The comparison with a wooden puppet presents the narrator as something handled by others. The later comparison of her haircut with a coward's explains the shame she associates with the imposed appearance.

A metaphor describes one thing as another. The ending presents the child as one of many animals driven by a herder. This image expresses her feeling that her individuality has disappeared under collective control.

Contrast and the emotional movement

Contrast places differences beside each other to make them clearer. Soft moccasins, a type of soft footwear, contrast with stiff or squeaking shoes. Her mother's quiet reasoning contrasts with the force and lack of comfort she experiences away from home.

The emotional movement runs from confusion to declared resistance, then fear, struggle and anguish. The final loss of spirit is especially painful because the earlier refusal has shown her determination. Her physical defeat becomes understandable without being presented as willing acceptance.

Which key quotations help explain the conflict?

Authority and the choice to resist

“We have to submit, because they are strong,”

Speaker and context: Judewin says this after warning the narrator about the haircut. The reason she gives is the adults' strength. The line reveals her judgement about unequal power, not a statement that the haircut is right.

“No, I will not submit! I will struggle first!”

Speaker and context: Zitkala-Sa replies to Judewin. Her response establishes a choice to resist before the escape begins. The emphasis falls on struggling first; she does not promise that the struggle will succeed.

Uncertainty, defeat and isolation

“What caused them to stoop and look under the bed I do not know.”

Speaker and context: The narrator recalls the searchers finding her. This sentence sets a clear limit on explanation. It does not support an invented account in which Judewin directs the adults to the hiding place.

“Then I lost my spirit.”

Speaker and context: The narrator describes her response after the scissors cut a braid. The short sentence marks the turning point from active struggle to emotional defeat. It should be read alongside, rather than used to erase, her earlier resistance.

“for now I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder.”

Speaker and context: The narrator ends her account with this image after recalling the absence of maternal comfort. It expresses a loss of individuality and humane treatment. The comparison communicates her experience of control; it is not a literal description of the children.

How can answers connect the events with their significance?

Move from evidence to explanation

An inference is a conclusion drawn from evidence rather than a fact directly stated. For example, the forced haircut and the mother's teaching together support an interpretation about cultural humiliation. The event supplies the evidence, while the interpretation explains why the event matters.

Keep sequence clear. The narrator cries at breakfast before Judewin warns her about the haircut. The later warning explains her decision to hide, not her earlier confusion over the bells. Giving the right cause to each reaction makes an answer precise.

Respect the limits of the account

Distinguish what the narrator knows from what she observes or assumes. She thinks the other girls seem unconcerned about their clothing. She knows that Judewin is searching. She does not know what causes the searchers to look under the bed.

For a character answer, link a quality to an action: determination to her refusal, fear to her trembling, and vulnerability to her enforced restraint. For a theme answer, connect more than one detail, such as the haircut and the closing animal image, to the same central idea.

A complete explanation of the ending should preserve both parts of the experience. She has resisted with words and actions, and she finally loses her spirit. Neither an account of passive acceptance nor a claim of immediate triumph does justice to that movement.

Glossary

• Belfry — The part of a building in which a bell is housed or hung.
• Bedlam — A state of noisy confusion that overwhelms the narrator on arrival.
• Paleface — The narrator's term in this account for a white person.
• Moccasins — Soft footwear worn by the narrator before being exchanged for shoes.
• Shingled hair — Hair cut short or close, associated here with capture and cowardice.
• Immodestly — In a way considered insufficiently covered according to the narrator's understanding of dress.
• Mourners — People grieving a death, associated in the narrator's community with short hair.
• Submit — To yield to another person's power or accept an imposed demand.
• Huddled — Drew herself closely together in the dark corner beneath the bed.
• Indignities — Humiliating experiences that injure a person's dignity and sense of worth.
• Anguish — Severe emotional suffering, felt by the narrator after her hair is cut.
• Herder — Someone who drives or directs animals, used in the closing comparison.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: The narrator willingly accepts a new hairstyle. Correct: She hides, resists capture and struggles while restrained. The haircut happens against her will.
• Misconception: Judewin is fluent in English. Correct: She knows a few words, enough to overhear the discussion and warn her friend.
• Misconception: Judewin reveals the hiding place. Correct: She joins the search, but the narrator does not know what makes the searchers look under the bed.
• Misconception: The first small bell tells everyone to sit. Correct: They pull out chairs at the first bell and sit at the second; eating begins after the third.
• Misconception: Short hair has no meaning beyond appearance. Correct: The narrator distinguishes associations with captured unskilled warriors, mourners and cowards.
• Misconception: The narrator's mother is present during the haircut. Correct: The child longs for her absent mother and remembers her quiet reasoning and care.
• Misconception: Fear makes the narrator passive throughout. Correct: She acts despite fear. Her loss of spirit comes after the cutting, following repeated attempts to resist.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. Judewin knows a few English words, overhears that the girls' hair will be cut, and warns the narrator. Explain two ways in which her limited understanding matters. [2 marks]

1. Her knowledge gives her access to the adults' discussion, allowing her to recognise the threat of the planned haircut.
2. By warning the narrator, she makes the danger known to her friend and gives her an opportunity to respond.

Q2. At the first bell, pupils pull out chairs but remain standing; at the second, they sit; at the third, they eat. The narrator sits too early, tries to rise, returns to her chair and finally cries. Explain her confusion and its emotional effect. [3 marks]

1. She mistakes pulling out a chair for a signal to sit, because she does not understand the fixed sequence governing the meal.
2. Her attempt to correct herself coincides with the second bell, making her return to the chair while the others sit down.
3. Repeated uncertainty leaves her afraid to attempt another action. Consequently, the third bell brings tears rather than participation in the meal.

Q3. The girls' mothers taught that only captured unskilled warriors had their hair shingled by enemies. The narrator adds that mourners wore short hair and cowards shingled hair. Using these details, explain three reasons the threatened haircut causes distress. [3 marks]

1. The teaching about captured warriors connects a haircut imposed by others with defeat and an enemy's power, making the threat deeply disturbing.
2. Short hair also has an association with mourning. The narrator therefore understands hair through serious communal meanings rather than as a matter of appearance alone.
3. Shingled hair is associated with cowardice, so the planned cut threatens to give her an appearance she understands as shameful and dishonourable.

Q4. Facing a threatened haircut, Judewin advises submission because the adults are strong. The narrator refuses, hides, stays silent when called, and kicks and scratches when discovered. Compare their responses to unequal power in four points. [4 marks]

1. Judewin recognises the difference in strength and concludes that submission is necessary. Her advice is based on the adults' power.
2. The narrator chooses resistance despite that unequal strength. Her refusal shows that she will not agree without first attempting to oppose them.
3. Hiding and remaining silent turn her refusal into practical action. She tries to prevent discovery and avoid the imposed haircut.
4. Kicking and scratching continue her opposition after discovery. Their different responses show that recognising superior force can lead either to yielding or to struggle.

Q5. To avoid a threatened haircut, the narrator enters a dim room with three white beds and hides under a bed. Searchers call her name; she stays silent. Someone raises the curtains, and she is discovered. She does not know why they look under the bed. Explain suspense, the anxious uncertainty about what will happen, and the limits of her knowledge in four points. [4 marks]

1. The dim room and concealed position create uncertainty about whether the narrator can remain hidden and avoid the threatened haircut.
2. The calls increase the pressure on her, while her deliberate silence prolongs the attempt to escape discovery and maintains the reader's uncertainty.
3. Raising the curtains changes the room from dimness to light, marking a movement towards exposure before the hiding place is discovered.
4. Her admitted uncertainty limits the explanation of discovery. It would be inaccurate to invent a person or specific clue that directed the searchers beneath the bed.

Q6. The narrator's blanket is removed and her moccasins are exchanged for shoes. She associates shingled hair with cowardice, refuses the haircut, is tied to a chair, and loses her spirit when a braid is cut. Explain how these details connect cultural identity, resistance and humiliation. [5 marks]

1. Removing her blanket separates the narrator from familiar clothing. This begins a pattern in which changes to her appearance are imposed rather than chosen by her.
2. Replacing her moccasins continues that pattern by taking away familiar footwear. Together, these changes show outside power reaching into ordinary aspects of her personal life.
3. Her association of shingled hair with cowardice gives the threatened haircut a cultural meaning. It threatens shame rather than merely an altered style.
4. Her refusal and subsequent restraint establish that the haircut is forced. Being tied to a chair prevents her opposition from controlling what happens to her body.
5. Her loss of spirit after the braid is cut shows the emotional result. Physical power succeeds in changing her appearance while causing profound humiliation.

Q7. After the haircut, the narrator recalls being stared at and handled like a wooden puppet. She longs for her mother, who used to reason quietly with her, but receives no comfort. She ends by comparing herself to an animal driven by a herder. Analyse the ending in five points. [5 marks]

1. The remembered staring places the haircut within an accumulation of painful experiences. Her distress results from repeated humiliation, rather than a single isolated inconvenience.
2. The puppet comparison conveys a loss of control. She feels handled as an object whose movements depend on others instead of on her own will.
3. Remembering her mother's quiet reasoning introduces a contrasting form of adult behaviour. It associates home with patient engagement and attention to the child's feelings.
4. The absence of comfort makes her separation from that care especially painful. Her longing receives no reassuring response when she is already deeply distressed.
5. The herder comparison expresses dehumanisation: treatment that disregards individual humanity. She feels reduced to one controlled creature among many, without personal recognition.

Key takeaways

• Zitkala-Sa's autobiographical account recalls a childhood experience of imposed change, resistance and profound humiliation.
• The dining-room bells expose the narrator's unfamiliarity with a fixed routine and leave her frightened of making another mistake.
• Judewin's limited English enables her to overhear the haircut plan and warn the narrator of the approaching threat.
• The meaning of hair comes from the narrator's community and her mother's teaching, making the haircut culturally painful.
• The narrator's refusal, hiding, silence and physical struggle show active resistance even though the adults overpower her.
• The ending contrasts remembered maternal care with an absence of comfort and expresses a painful loss of individuality.
• First-person narration preserves both immediate emotion and uncertainty, including the narrator's inability to explain why the searchers looked beneath the bed.

Test yourself

What makes the opening environment overwhelming for the narrator?

Bitter cold, harsh bells, clattering shoes and voices speaking an unfamiliar language combine to make her feel trapped and distressed.

What happens at each of the three small dining-room bells?

The pupils pull out their chairs at the first, sit at the second and begin eating after the third.

Why can Judewin understand the threat before the narrator does?

Judewin knows a few English words and overhears the woman discussing the cutting of their long hair.

Where does the narrator hide, and what makes the room dim?

She hides beneath a bed in the corner farthest from the door. Dark green curtains cover the room's windows.

Does the narrator explain what causes the searchers to look under the bed?

No. She explicitly says she does not know what caused them to stoop and look beneath it.

When does the narrator say she loses her spirit?

She loses her spirit after feeling the scissors against her neck and hearing them cut off one of her braids.

Why does the narrator remember her mother at the end?

She longs for comfort and recalls how her mother used to reason quietly with her, unlike the treatment she now receives.

What does the closing herder image express?

It expresses her feeling of being controlled as one among many animals, without the individual care and recognition she needs.