Throughout the course of a human life, a deep infatuation can develop between that person and an object; a kind of love transcends the object and encompasses a deeper meaning behind the object. The speaker, in Marilyn Nelson Waniek’s poem “, describes her love of her Meema’s quilt. Through vivid colors, a nostalgic tone, and a shift in the syntax help to convey the diversity of the speaker’s heritage as well as her desire to maintain and instill her culture with her next generation.
The use of imagery helps develop the love the speaker. Caught in a sincere remembrance, the speaker and her sister “were in love / with Meema’s Indian blanket. / We fell asleep under army green / issued to Daddy by Supply” (1-4). This juxtaposition aids in
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establishing the importance of the speaker’s Meema’s blanket. There is this reminiscent tone established as the speaker thinks back to her Meema’s blanket; a blanket that brought warmth and would “caress [the speaker] into silence” (20). Her Meema’s blanket differs greatly from her father’s blanket. The army issued blanket the father was supplied with does not comfort the speaker; the arm blanket only provides the speaker with warmth as that is the only objective of such a blanket. The army blanket keeps soldiers warm, and does not emit the same caring and loving feeling. In addition, the vivid colors used help to illustrate the diversity of the speaker’s family and suggest prejudice that used to exist.
The speaker finds a quilt; the relationship between the speaker and her quilt is equivalent to Meema’s relationship with her Indian blanket. The quilt is a plethora of colors; there are “15 Six Van Dyke brown squares, / two white ones, and one square / the yellowbrown of Mama’s cheeks” (15-17). A quilt is very similar to a blanket. However, a quilt is made of many different pieces of fabric sewn together, just as the speaker describes. The quilt she has is full of different colors and different fabrics coming together to make something that evokes a feeling of love and warmth within the speaker. The use of colors helps to develop the extended metaphor that exists in this poem; the quilt is a metaphor for the speaker’s familial past. The speaker’s Meema is of Indian descent who grows up “in Kentucky / among her yellow sisters” (24-25). The speaker's grandfather comes from a “white family” (26). Just as a quilt is composed of many different things, the speaker’s family is comprised of many different backgrounds and cultures. These different cultures came together and blended together to create the speaker’s family. However, there may have been this sense prejudice and discrimination between the whites and Indians that …show more content…
emerged. The structure of the poem helps establish the tones and convey the meaning that she hopes her cultural traditions from the past will persist in the future generations of her family.
The poem is told in the first person point of view. Being told in this point of view creates a narrative and conversational feeling when reading the poem. In addition, The speaker begins the poem with simple sentences; each sentence contains a subject and a predicate, nothing more. In this part of the poem, there is a nostalgic, reminiscent tone. The speaker remembers back to the days when she was in love with her Meema’s blanket. The speaker looks back to a time when she “planned to inherit / the blanket, how [her and her sister] used to wrap ourselves / at play in its folds” (9-11). The beginning part of the poem, the speaker reflects back on her past, which is represented by simple sentences. However, as the poem progress, the sentence structure shifts. The sentences go from simple sentences to more complex sentences. With each memory, the sentences begin to grow longer; through this transition, clauses and prepositional phrases are included which shift the tone of the poem. The poem shifts from a nostalgic tone to a more dream-like tone. In this section of the poem, the speaker moves on from remembering the past to focussing about the future. In this dream-like trance, the speaker believes that while she is “under this quilt / [she’d] dream of [her]self … within the dream of
myself / perhaps I’d meet my son / or my other child, as yet unconceived” (36-43). This shift highlights the speaker's interests in sustaining her family's culture in her children
Quilt making in the African American community has a long history dating back to the 18th century and has been important for ways of communicating social and political conditions. During the time when African Americans were enslaved, quilting became a popular way of communicating safety to African Americans escaping their way to freedom, up north. The tradition of Quilting was past down form generation to generation, by mother’s to daughter’s as a way of teaching the daughter about the past and giving them a valuable skill that could add to their lives. In the series Bitter Nest by Faith Ringgold, Ringgold’s communicates her life experiences with her daughters though using the art of story telling, traditional African materials, the art of quilting, and elements of art to make a unique story-quilt that appeals to African Americans of all ages.
Heritage in a family can be preserved in many different ways. Be it a diary written by your great great grandpa or a pot your grandma passed on to your mum who passed it on to you, nothing compares to the great comfort in understanding ones heritage especially when it involves the deep love and devotion of a strong mother. In the poem "My Mother Pieced Quilts" by Teresa Acosta and the short story "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker, both authors use imagery and figurative language to establish a quilt as a symbol for a mothers love of her children to illustrate their themes.
There exists, in each and every individual, a desire to belong to something greater than one’s self. While there is much in life that one must discover on their own, the security ensured through the bonds of acceptance provides many with a means of identification. Such classification is exemplified in the poem “The Century Quilt” by Marilyn Nelson Wenick, where familial bonds are examined through the means of a family coverlet. Through the utilization of literary techniques, the author effectively develops the complex meaning of the century quilt.
In "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker, two sisters want the handmade quilt that is a symbol of the family heritage. Alice Expresses what her feeling are about her heritage through this story. It means everything to her. Something such as a quilt that was hand made makes it special. Only dedication and years of work can represent a quilt.
The quilts were pieced together by Mama, Grandma Dee, and Big Dee symbolizing a long line of relatives. The quilts made from scraps of dresses worn by Grandma Dee, Grandpa Jarrell’s Paisley shirts, and Great Grandpa Ezra’s Civil War uniform represented the family heritage and values, and had been promised to Mama to Maggie when she married. However, Dee does not understand the love put into the making of the quilts, neither does she understand the significance of the quilts as part of her family heritage. It is evident she does not understand the significance of the quilt, having been offered one when went away to college declaring them “as old-fashioned” and “out of style”. She does not care about the value of the quilts to her family, rather she sees it as a work of art, valuable as an African heritage but not as a family heirloom. She wants the quilts because they are handmade, not stitched with around the borders. She tells Mama, “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!... She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use… But, they’re priceless!.. Maggie would put them on her the bed and in five years they’d be in rags. Less than that!” (317). The quilt signifies the family pride and history, which is important to Mama. She makes the decision to give the quilt to Maggie who will appreciate it more than Dee, to whom she says, “God knows I been saving ‘em for long enough with
The poem starts out with the daughter 's visit to her father and demand for money; an old memory is haunting the daughter. feeding off her anger. The daughter calls the father "a ghost [who] stood in [her] dreams," indicating that he is dead and she is now reliving an unpleasant childhood memory as she stands in front of his
The speaker declares “each square [of the quilt] holds a sweet gum leaf.” Trees are often symbols of wisdom in literature but also represent family, hence the practice of constructing a family tree. The narrator often mentions memories about her family the quilt evokes so by comparing “Meema’s Indian blanket” to a tree the audience is led to believe that the quilt is symbolic for the importance of family and that you should cherish the small things in life like “all of the beautiful sisters” and “childhood miracles.” Later in the poem the speaker admires the quilt’s “pattern of leaves” after declaring it “The Century Quilt.” By metaphorically comparing the blanket to a tree for a second time, Waniek emphasized Meema’s wisdom since she crafted the quilt and enforced that the indian blanket represents the importance of family and preserving your
As the poem The Century Quilt by Marilyn Waniek opens the feelings of the speaker become evident to the reader. The speaker clearly states how a family quilt has influenced her and her family. The speaker goes on to discuss this quilt in great detail using literary devices to express her emotions. Literary devices such as structure, imagery, and tone, are used to convey the complex meaning of the family quilt.
The first stanza embodies a nostalgic tone due to the memories presented of the authors Dad and Meema. The idea of this nostalgic stanza is peaceful with the use of the words “asleep”, “meema”, and “princess”, as the use of sleep is the most restful and thus peaceful state one can be in. “Memma” elicits fond memories of oes grandmother or similar figure which generally the granddaughter is the pride and joy. Lastly, “princess” brings people to when they dreamed of being magical charecters and they still had all the peace and imagination in the world. The structure is somewhat short, yet still descriptive as to describe how much there is left in ones life. Connecting this quilt to the memorires of the past gives it life and starts the story it is about to tell.
As the poem progresses, so does the speaker’s story. She never stops or backtracks because life does not either. The speaker’s shift from past tense to hypotheticals further develops the continuations of life, and how one must look ahead to the future. Her childhood has always faded away like her Meema’s, and it’s time for new experiences. Her “Meema must have, under her blanket, dreamed she was a girl again.” The blanket, of Indian origin that represented her history, did not protect her Meema from growing up, and she cannot go back to previous moments or eras. Even though Meema “dreamed” and wished the quilt does not possess magical properties, rather just the comfort of knowing she’ll remember these precious memories. The speaker’s wondering of her Meema through hypothetical statements also reflects her inability to go back in time and relive the past. However, her quilt or Meema’s blanket capture memories and keep them
At first glance, Waniek’s poem, “The Century Quilt” is about the love that the speaker and her sister shared for an Indian blanket that belonged to their Meema. However, she tells a story with a much deeper meaning and uses many different literary techniques to develop this underlying meaning. Waniek keenly structures her poem, her use of imagery and the tone conveyed to create pathos within her audience. This piece is centered on the idea of family and what a blessing it is to have an object that ties the people that you love, together.Notice how the poem is split into three stanzas. In the first, Waniek talks about the speaker’s love for the blanket recalls how her and her sister used it for entertainment as children. In the next stanza, she
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
The quilts symbolize the speaker’s culture when she says “knotted with love / the quilts sing on” (Acosta line 56-57). This quote is significant because it states that the quilts will continue to represent the speaker’s culture and reveal her memories. The floor symbolizes her culture as a working place. The speaker says “In the evenings you sat at your canvas / - our cracked linoleum floor, the drawing board” (Acosta lines 28-29). This quote is significant because it shows that the mother used the floor as her working space. The author shows her culture through quilts and shows that in her
Mourning," similarly concentrate on the subject of love. However, each poet contrasts in his conception of love and the way he chooses to disclose this conception through tone, diction, and other figurative language devices. By recognizing the differences, one comes to value and appreciate each poem's significance.
In Teresa Acosta's poem "My Mother Pieced Quilts", Acosta uses imagery / and figurative language to establish the quilt as a symbol for family memories. The author is examining how the quilt is being put together as she pointed out "then she cemented / them with your needle / a thimble" (lines 17-19). The quilt was used to describe cementing the family memories together. The author also uses personification to represent the quilts as living, breaking memories, "stretched out they lay / armed/ ready/ celebrating" (lines 54-55). The quilt is a gathering of memories that are celebrating as you