Toni Cade Bambara reveals the many different labels a 1970s Brooklyn community unconsciously gives an older African-American woman. Throughout the short story, My Man Bovanne, a woman by the name of Ms. Hazel stresses that her main focus is to give back to her community. Ms. Hazel is also a mother of three and although she seems to always have good intentions, her children seem to think otherwise. The conflicting representation of Ms. Hazel through her clothes, nurturing tactics, and form of dance is evident through the way her children view her actions and the way Ms. Hazel intends to be viewed. Ms. Hazel’s children do not approve of her fashion because they do not think it is appropriate for a woman her age.
Although Mama lived a meager life, it is apparent that she wanted more for her daughter’s future. She, with the help of her church family, raised enough money to send Dee away to Augusta to complete school. In contrast, she remarks that she only ever finished 2nd grade. She does not emanate regret, only fact. She recounts, “…the school closed down after 2nd grade.
“She thinks her sister held life always in the palm of her hand, and that “no” is a word the world never learned to say to her.”(Walker 423) Around Dee, Maggie is ashamed of the burns scars down her arms and legs, and walks funny ever since. Mama is aware of this and describes the posture she’s always in after the fire “That is the way my Maggie walks. She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, and feet in shuffle.”(Walker 424) While mama waits for Dee’s arrival, she dreams of a time where Dee can finally acknowledge her as a mom and that she can finally understand that she shaped her into the intelligent, beautiful woman that she is today. ”Then we are on the stage and Dee is embracing me with tears in her eyes.”(Walker 424) but she also states that Dee does not like the shape of her body “I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley
The Mother is a static character who remains unchanged throughout the story. Olsen paints an image of herself as that of a strong and caring Mother with a lot of guilt. The conflict for the Mother is the remorse for neglecting her first born child even though the neglect could not be helped. Olsen states, “I will become engulfed with all I did or did not do, with what should have been and cannot be helped” (290). Emily is a minor character in the story and is the Mother’s first born child.
HIST 352 PSA #3 Anne Moody “Coming of Age in Mississippi” The autobiography “Coming of Age in Mississippi” by Anne Moody is the story of her life growing up as a poor black girl in one of the most racially discriminated states in America. She was born in 1940 and her story covers 19 years of her life beginning with when she was 4 years old all the through the age of twenty-three. Anne Moody also referred to as Essie Mae was the daughter of a poor sharecropper who was working for white farmers and her mother Toosweet who was working as a made for various white families, so did Moody. One of the passages that struck me the most in Chapter 9 is “… I had to secure that plate of dry beans if nothing else.” (Moody, 121) The passage caught my attention because of all her struggles with school and her family being poor, she had to worry about her families well-being and act like a grown up at such a young age. Despite her working hard to feed her family and not being able to enjoy her childhood, she experienced racism and discrimination at a young age which led to her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
The timeless theme explored in The Glass Castle is forgiveness. Jeannette spends her whole life forgiving her parents over and over for the choices they made that adversely impacted DeBortoli 2 and ratty clothes plus stealing their money and sometimes their souls, Rex and Rose Mary didn’t deserve forgiveness. However, Jeannette and her brother and sisters always find a way to welcome their parents back into their hearts. The Glass Castle is narrated in the first person by Jeannette Walls as she relates her
Social Sensitively in “Walker Brothers Cowboy” In “Walker Brothers Cowboy,” Munro writes about a poor family. She never does come out and says or spells it out that they are poor; rather she seems to constantly hint at the family’s situation through the narrator’s description of the family doings and their relationships with the outside world. In the first paragraph of the story, the reader discovers that another school year is about to start, and the girl’s mother “has ripped up for this purpose an old suit and an old plaid wool dress of hers, and she has to cut and match very cleverly and also make me stand for endless fittings, sweaty, itching from the hot wool, ungrateful.” (Munro, 2510) The reader can comprehend that the girl is unhappy with the state of things and is just aware enough of the state of affairs. This comes to the conclusion that the family has lack of money; therefore the mother can not buy a dress, so she has to make one form scratch. The reader can also see that the family is poor in a different state of mind.
Of the two daughters at odds over family heirlooms in the story Everyday Use, Alice Walker resembles each one. Like the burned Maggie, she spent a childhood even more limited than her family’s rural poverty dictated, for as a little girl she was shot in the eye with a BB gun; the disfigurement plagued her until it was corrected during her college years. Like Dee, she was able to attend college – first Spellman College and then Sarah Lawrence College on a scholarship – the slaves who made those bricks surely suffered in the process. From her native Eatonton, Georgia, Walk gained an understanding of the rural South. In her essay, Beyond the Peacock, Walker evaluates both the older white writer Flannery O’Connor, who lived nearby in Milledgeville, and the perspectives from which readers see the region and its heritage.
Good and bad. Guilty and innocent. These are only a few of the countless themes that surround everyone’s life. All of these themes are found in the short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, by Flannery O’Connor. The story is about a “good” woman (the grandmother), who goes on a vacation with her son and his family and in the end suffers horribly due to her poor beliefs and judgment, but at the same time learns real importance of “good” in a “bad” situation.
Dee mistakes her family background for material and desires racial heritage because she went to school with other people and friends with popular ideas. Maggie never experienced school other than her family life. Maggie’s appearance and style shows that heritage is not solely defined by material things. Mama describes Maggie as “… homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe” (Walker 476). The scars on Maggie’s body from the fire have shaped her personality and represent a deeper meaning.