My Grandmother and "The Moths"

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Katherine June 15, 2008 English Paper One My Grandmother and “The Moths” Helena Maria Viramontes is the author of the short story “The Moths”, which is about a lonely fourteen-year old girl who has a broken relationship with her family and is caring for her dying Abuelita (grandmother). At the beginning of the story, the girl reveals how she’s always considered herself to be the family outcast; she is not as beautiful, kind nor as skilled as her older sisters. The girl is defensive and disrespectful, she feels misunderstood and alone. There was continuous conflict in her house, and the mother sends the girl over to the grandmother’s house to avoid it. To the girl the grandmother was powerful and understanding, “Abuelita made a balm out of dried moth wings and Vicks and rubbed my hands, shaped them back to size and it was the strangest feeling”(1118). The girl remembers times before her grandmother got sick, helping her plant seedlings and flowers in red Hills Brothers coffee cans or cooking pungent chilies in the kitchen. Abuelita inspired feelings of love, comfort and security in the girl. The grandmother is very sick, the girl goes to a church to pray and in hopes of finding answers or salvation. She finds no comfort there. Her family is disappointed in her because she does not believe or attend mass. When the girl returns back to her grandmother’s, she finds her mother sobbing in the kitchen; there is obvious tension and sadness in the situation. The girl sits alone outside on the porch swing until sundown, then goes back inside to make soup. As the girl flipped on the kitchen light, Abuelita passed away. The girl very carefully undresses her grandmother’s lifeless body and carries her into the bathroom and then into the warm water of the bathtub. The story ends with the girl hugging her grandmother, crying and rocking back and forth in the water.
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