Alice Walker Essay Example for Free

Alice Walker EssayThis story is distinctive, however, in that Walker stresses non only the importance of language but also the destructive effects of its misuse. Clearly, Dee privileges language over silence, as she demonstrates in her determination to be educated and in the importance she places on her name. quite a than providing a apparitionalist for newfound aw arness and for community, however, verbal skill equips Dee to oppress and manipulate others and to isolate herself when she lived at home, she read to her sister and mother without pity forcing words, lies, other folks habits, whole lives upon us, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. mom recalls that Dee washed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didnt unavoidably need to know. Pressed us to her with the serious flair she read, to shove us away at beneficial the moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand (50). Dee uses words to wash, burn, press, and shove . We are told that the nervous girls and furtive boys whom she regarded as her friends worshiped the well-turned invent and her scalding humor that erupted like bubbles in lye (51).It is non surprising, then, that mama, mistrustful of language, expresses herself in the climactic scene of the story not through words but through deeds she hugs Maggie to her, drags her in the room where Dee sits holding the quilts, snatches the quilts from Dee, and dumps them into Maggies lap. scarce as an afterthought does she speak at all, telling Dee to take one or two of the others. Mamas actions, not her words, silence the daughter who has, up to this point, used language to control others and separate herself from the community Mama tells us that Dee turns and leaves the room without a word (59). In much of Walkers work, a characters dawning sense of self is stand for not only by the acquisition of an individual voice but also through integration into a community. Mamas new appreciation of M aggie is significant because it represents the establishment of a sisterhood between mother and daughter. honorable before taking the quilts out of Dees hands, Mama tells us, I did something I never had done before (58). The something to which she refers is fundamentally two actions Mama embraces Maggie and says no to Dee for the initiatory time. Since we are told that she held Maggie when she was burned in the fire, and since Mamas personality suggests that she would most potential hug her daughter often, she is of course referring not merely to the literal hug but to the first spiritual embrace, representing her decision nolonger to judge her jr. daughter by the shallow standards Dee embodiescriteria that Mama has been utilize to measure both Maggie and herself up until the climax of the story.When Mama acts on Maggies behalf, she is responding to the largely nonverbal message that her younger daughter has been sending for some time, but which Mama herself has been unable fully to accept. Now Maggie and Mama are allied in their rejection of Dees attempts to devalue their lifestyle, and their new sense of community enables Maggie to smile a real smile, not scared. Significantly, the story ends with the two of them sitting in silence, just enjoying, until it was time to go in the house and go to bed (59). Ultimately, however. Mama has the last word it is she, after all, who tells the story. Yet her control over the text is win gradually. Walker employs an unusual narrative structure to parallel Mamas development as she strengthens her voice and moves toward community with Maggie. Rather than reporting the entire event in retrospect, Mama relates the first half of the story as it occurs, using present and future tenses up until the moment Dee announces her new name.The commentary that Mama makes about herself and Maggie in the first portion of the story is therefore made before the awakening that she undergoes during the quilt episodebefore she is able to reject tout ensemble Dees desire that she and Maggie be something that they are not. Prior to the encounter with Dee over the quilts, although Mama at times speaks sardonically about Dees selfish attitude, she nonetheless dreams repeatedly of appearing on a television program the way my daughter would want me to be a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake, wielding a quick and witty tongue (48). Mamas distaste for Dees egotism is tempered by her desire to be well-thought-of by her daughter. In part, then, Mama has come to define herself in terms of her failure to meet the standards of what Lindsey expel calls a basically white middle-class identity (88)the white-male-dominated system portrayed in the television show. When Mama holds up her own strengths next to those valued by Dee and the white Johnny Carson society, she sees herself as one poised always in a position of fear, with one foot raised in flight (49).