Analysis Of The Century Quilt

Many families often have items that they may pass on from generation to generation. Sometimes that item can be a ring, a book, a toy, or in the poem "The Century Quilt" the heirloom would be a quilt. In this poem there may be a sibling that is upset about not receiving the item. The author shows symbolism, theme, and foreshadowing to explain how the narrator in the poem may have felt about her family and the blanket that would be inherited.
Throughout this poem the author uses many forms of symbolism. The author tells a story through different objects that are described in the poem. In the first stanza the poem states " ... how we used to wrap ourselves at play in its folds and be chieftains and princesses." This symbolism shows that there is a sense of dominance over the younger sibling or siblings. In a Native American family, as the family of the narrator in the poem, the chief is the highest power in the tribe and playing "chieftains and princesses" shows that there is some form of order among the siblings. Another form of symbolism is when the younger sibling

makes her own quilt because she did not receive the heirloom quilt from her grandmother. In the poem it states " Now I've found a quilt that l'd like to die under;" this shows that maybe because she did not receive the quilt from her grandmother she decided to make her own quilt and start her own heirloom.
The theme of the poem can have various meanings, but one theme in particular is that just because your family may not be how you want it to be you will sometimes have to make your own path. In the poem in the third stanza it states "I think I'd have good dreams for a hundred years under this quilt." Since she could not have the family heirloom she decided to make her own and dreams of making new memories with her family with this special quilt. Often times when people feel as if they have been neglected of something they will try and make their own path so that they can give their children something that they have always wanted but never had. The sibling in the poem may have felt a little bit of jealousy but she found a way to make her own way. In stanza four it states "perhaps under this quilt I'd dream of myself", because she thought about how her grandmother may have felt under her quilt she wanted the same feeling under the quilt that she had made for herself. The narrator wanted to feel that sense of comfort even though she felt she should have received the quilt so her way of feeling that was making her own and starting something within her family.
Towards the end of the poem the author uses backstory to explain what is going on the narrator's mind about the situation and how she may have felt just as her grandmother felt.

In the last stanzas in the poem the narrator is thinking about how her grandmother may have felt and what she may have went through, from what she may have heard, when she was a little girl. In stanza four it states "... as Meema must have, under her blanket, dreamed she was a girl again in Kentucky." She is flashbacking on her grandmother's life as a little girl and wonders how she felt under her blanket with her family in a house where she was not accepted that much. ("among her yellow sisters, their grandfather's white family."). The grandmother may has gone through the things that the young girl is going through now and she is thinking about how her grandmother's family was in her time when her grandmother was a young

girl.
Even when family may do things that may make you feel like have done you wrong does not meant that you do not have to make your own way and keep kind of a distance. The author shows how foreshadowing can show how the narrator may have felt and also use symbolism and theme to set how the author may have tried to show how the little girl felt in that time.