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The literary devices in maggie a girl of the streets
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The conclusion maggie a girl of the streets
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In Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Stephen Crane uses a quote in chapter two to portray that the environment the characters live in affect their futures.
“Eventually they entered into a dark region where, from a careening building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies the street and gutter...In the street infants played or fought with other infants or sat stupidly in the way of vehicles”(6). This quote shows the significance of the characters’ surroundings. To begin with, it is described as a dark and disgusting area which represents the darkness of the character’s lives. Furthermore, this quote shows the babies in the street playing or fighting. The fact that they are only infants and they are already fighting is shocking. This
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He works as a truck driver and he is described as belligerent. His personality is a result of his upbringing, “The inexperienced fibers of the boy’s eyes were hardened at an early age...During that time his sneer became chronic. He studied human nature in the gutter...He never conceived a respect for the world because he had begun with no idols that it had smashed” (15). When it says that his “eyes were hardened at an early age”, we see how much Jimmie is shaped by his childhood. Furthermore, “he had begun with no idols” portrays that he never had positive role models to look up to. As an adult, he is involved in many fights, “He had been in quite a number of miscellaneous fights, and in some general barroom rows, that had become known to the police” (18). He was also in the “barroom” which suggests that Jimmie was a drinker. The reader sees that the violence and alcoholism of his parents have been passed on to Jimmie. Also, he views women in a physical manner, “Jimmie’s occupation for a long time was to stand on the street corners and watch the world go by, dreaming blood-red dreams at the passing of pretty women. He menaced mankind at the intersections of streets” (15). Jimmie dreams “blood-red dreams” about women which shows his lust for them. Furthermore, “he menaced mankind” which shows that Jimmie is not even considered a part of mankind anymore, instead, he is like an animal. This is supported by another quote, “He became …show more content…
In the beginning of the story, Maggie is described as an innocent person, “The girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle. She grew to be a most rare and wonderful production of a tenement district, a pretty girl. None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins” (18). The use of the words “mud” and “dirt” depicts the dirtiness of the Rum Alley neighborhood. Despite all this, Maggie still “blossomed”. She is kind to her siblings and takes care of Tommie and Jimmie. For instance, she begins crying when she sees that Jimmie has been fighting and hugs him when he is scared of their parents, “She grasped the urchin’s arm in her little trembling hands and they huddled in the corner” (14). However, as the book progresses, Maggie becomes more susceptible to physicality. We see this by the way she falls in love with Pete. To begin with, she falls in love with Pete at first sight, “His mannerisms stamped him as a man who had a correct sense of personal superiority” (20). However, he is physical just like everyone else. Jimmie and Pete brag about their fights, “Say, I jes’ jumped deh bar an’ deh way I plunked dat blokie was great” (21). Also, the first thing he says to Maggie is, “Say, Mag, I’m stuck on yer shape. It’s outa sight” (22). Pete cares about Maggie’s body which also shows his physical nature. Overtime, Maggie also becomes physical. First of all, she begins thinking about Pete’s wealth, “As she had seen him twice and he
The author illustrates the “dim, rundown apartment complex,” she walks in, hand and hand with her girlfriend. Using the terms “dim,” and “rundown” portrays the apartment complex as an unsafe, unclean environment; such an environment augments the violence the author anticipates. Continuing to develop a perilous backdrop for the narrative, the author describes the night sky “as the perfect glow that surrounded [them] moments before faded into dark blues and blacks, silently watching.” Descriptions of the dark, watching sky expand upon the eerie setting of the apartment complex by using personification to give the sky a looming, ominous quality. Such a foreboding sky, as well as the dingy apartment complex portrayed by the author, amplify the narrator’s fear of violence due to her sexuality and drive her terror throughout the climax of the
When we meet our narrator, the mother of Maggie and Dee, she is waiting in the yard with Maggie for Dee to visit. The mother takes simple pleasure in such a pleasant place where, "anyone can come back and look up at the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come inside the house." (Walker 383) This is her basic attitude, the simple everyday pleasures that have nothing to do with great ideas, cultural heritage or family or racial histories. She later reveals to us that she is even more the rough rural woman since she, "can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man." (Walker 383) Hardly a woman one would expect to have much patience with hanging historical quilts on a wall. Daughter Maggie is very much the opposite of her older sister, Dee. Maggie is portrayed as knowing "she is not bright." (Walker 384)
In this story, Maggie is a lot like her mother. They both are uneducated, loving, caring, and allow Dee to run over them. Maggie has been through more things than her mother has though, because of the incident that happened. Maggie has scars like Emily, except Maggie’s scars are from a house fire (319). The house fire has impacted Maggie’s life tremendously, since she is very self-conscious and shy. Walker stated that Maggie is “ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs (318). The mother is protective of Maggie and will be there for her whenever she needs her too. Even though her mother knows all her struggles, she still supports her and pushes her to be better. I think that is one reason she pushes her to marry John Thomas, because she wants her to become her own person and to be strong (319). The mother of “Everyday Use” is opposite from the mother in “I Stand Here Ironing”, because she is there for her children no matter what their financial status
In the story “Everyday Use” Walker weaves us into the lives of Momma, Dee, and Maggie, an underprivileged family in rural Georgia. Momma is described as a loving, hard working woman who cares more about her family’s welfare than her appearance. The conflict comes along with Momma’s two daughters Dee and Maggie whose personalities are as different as night and day. Dee, the younger, is an attractive, full figured, light skinned young lady with ample creativity when it comes to getting what she wants and feels she needs. Maggie on the other hand, is darker skinned, homely and scarred from the fire that destroyed the family’s first house. Throughout the story we are told about Maggie’s timid and withdrawn behavior. Her own mother described her as “. . . a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car . . . That is the way my Maggie walks . . . chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire.” (Handout, Walker) She is constantly overpowered by her dominant sister who “held life in the palm of one hand, that “no” is a word the world never learned to say to her” (Handout, Walker). It seems as if Walker herself find Maggie inferior, seeing as how she is a minor character in the story. Things begin to turn around for Maggie towards the end when she receives the family’s...
The story begins with the narrator’s description of the physically confining elements surrounding her. The setting is cast in an isolated colonial mansion, set back from the road and three miles from the village (674). The property contains hedges that surround the garden, walls that surround the mansion, and locked gates that guarantee seclusion. Even the connected garden represents confinement, with box-bordered paths and grape covered arbors. This image of isolation continues in the mansion. Although she prefers the downstairs room with roses all over the windows that opened on the piazza the narrator finds herself consigned to an out of the way dungeon-like nursery on the second floor. "The windows in the nursery provide views of the garden, arbors, bushes, and trees”(674). These views reinforce isolationism since, the beauty can be seen from the room but not touched or experienced. There is a gate at the head of the stairs, presumably to keep children contained in their play area of the upstairs with the nursery. Additionally, the bed is immoveable " I lie here on this great immovable bed- it is nailed down, I believe-and follow that pattern about by the hour" (678). It is here in this position of physical confinement that the narrator secretly describes her descent into madness.
“Straining his eyes, he saw the lean figure of General Zaroff. Then... everything went dark. Maggie woke up in her bed. “Finally woke up from that nightmare. Man… I miss my brother. Who was that person that my brother wanted to kill?” she looks at the clock and its 9:15am “Crap I’m late for work!” Maggie got in her car and drove to the hospital for work.
Maggie is an undeniably insecure girl. She lacks any self-confidence and is very quiet. She doesn’t speak her mind very much, and this is because of her insecurities. Maggie’s insecurities stem from her sister, Dee. Dee had many things that Maggie never had. Dee was beautiful and had an education, things Maggie had always wanted. Maggie lacks confidence because she lived in her sister’s shadow her entire life.
Maggie lives with a poor and dysfunctional family and a hopeless future with only the small possibility of change. The environment and setting she grows up in do not support anything more than a dull, dreary and pathetic future for her. An old woman asks Maggie's brother Jimmy: "Eh, Gawd, child, what is it this time? Is yer fader beatin yer mudder, or yer mudder beatin yer fader? (Maggie, 10)" while he runs to Maggie's apartment one night. The lack of love and support of her family hinders Maggie's ability to live a happy and fulfilling life. Without knowing that someone loves her no matter what she does or how she acts Maggie may feel desperate enough to change her situation by any means she can, and without any useful guidance. Even without any positive influences Maggie grows up different from the low-life's living with and around her. Crane explains Maggie's uniqueness in the passage "None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins. The philosophers up-stairs, down-stairs and on the same floor, puzzled over it" (Maggie 16). Maggie's uniqueness gives her the chance to improve her life, but only a slim chance. Even though Maggie differs from the people around her they remain sleazy, making it harder for her to change her life because she must go outside of her community for help.
They may argue Maggie could of escape from the slum life and she didn’t have to let it take a hold of her. They may also say that Maggie was her own downfall and demise by letting a boy drag her down to the mud and damage her good name. However, because of her upbringing, it was hard for her not to be affected by her environment and social factors.
Have you ever seen the Disney movie Cinderella? Cinderella was always jealous of her step sisters always being up lifted, while she was always degraded by her step mother however, at the end everything changed for Cinderella just as it did for Maggie. There are a numerous of themes throughout the story “Everyday Use”. Race is showed when Dee leaves home and comes back embracing her African American cultural. Family also plays a major role in “Everyday Use”. In “Everyday Use” Maggie’s characterization presents her as ignorant; however, a closer look reveals Maggie ignorance is not a representative of her potential but, rather her mother’s bias.
Maggie relationship with Dee is full of jealousy and envy. Maggie thinks that her sister is better, prettier, and smarter than she will ever be. Because of that, Maggie is shy and intimidated when her sister and her boyfriend come home to visit for the first time in years. Dee on the other hand does not make it any better, because of her jealousy and judgmental ways make Maggie feel unloved and unappreciated. When Maggie is burn in the house fire Dee shows no concern if her sister lives or die. Even their mother knows that their relationship is nonexistent. Dee’s mother said “I used to think she hated Maggie” (Walker 154). Even as adults Dee and Maggie love for one another is arm distance away. Dee feels that her mother and sister are not claiming their heritage and are close minded country
Many of the children are taken to see the child in the room when they are pre-teens. “This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding” (Kennedy 261). The children of Omelas learn of the secret that keeps the city going, for a child this would be a horrible thing to see. In order for them to keep everything prosperous, they are not able to do anything. “They feel disgusted…But there is nothing they can do…if it were cleaned and fed…all the prosperity and beauty…would wither and be destroyed” (Kennedy 261). There is nothing that can be done for this child, anything that seems remotely helpful would lead to total devastation. After visiting the child, most people rationalize keeping the child the way it is because anything else would be total cause. They believe that the child only knows that room; anything new would be unfamiliar and terrifyingly uncomfortable to it. A few do not rationalize the situation this way, “[a]t times… [a few adolescence do not] go home… [they] go out into the streets…and they do not comeback” (Kennedy 262). Along with the adolescence, very few adults come to the conclusion that they cannot deal with the situation: so they leave. They take the road out of the city, through the mountains away from Omelas. Leaving the city is the only way they can get away from the guilt of prospering from the child’s suffering, these are the ones who walked away from
Maggie is introduced into the storyline quite subtle and quickly becomes the main focus of attention by the other three main characters. From the beginning, Maggie is a harsh contrast to the slum environment she has to endure. She "blossomed in a mud puddle ... a most rare and wonderful production of a tenement district, a pretty girl" (16) that not only had the physical beauty that her family seemed to lack, but also the hope that she could be better than what was around in her environment. Therefore, the slum environment that surrounds her contrasts her character greatly. "None of the dirt of Rum Alley was in her veins" (16) as she became the talk of numerous males in the neighborhood.
During the 19th centaury we can observe a shift from romanticism to a more realistic point of view. In this semester we have explore a lot of literature work that represents the theme of hypocrisy. According to the Merrianwebster dictionary Hypocrisy means “the behavior of people who do things that they tell other people not to do: behavior that does not agree with what someone claims to believe or feel” The theme of Hypocrisy have been introduce in this semester by a novel name Maggie: a girl on the street by Stephen Crane. Hypocrisy was and it’s still in today society one the most frequent trait in individuals. Many of the main characters in this book show the characteristic of hypocrisy by trying to implement the not use of a behavior by using the same behavior that is not desirable. The other example of hypocrisy is how the characters criticizes the decision taken by the Maggie the main character, which they themselves are
The story begins as the boy describes his neighborhood. Immediately feelings of isolation and hopelessness begin to set in. The street that the boy lives on is a dead end, right from the beginning he is trapped. In addition, he feels ignored by the houses on his street. Their brown imperturbable faces make him feel excluded from the decent lives within them. The street becomes a representation of the boy’s self, uninhabited and detached, with the houses personified, and arguably more alive than the residents (Gray). Every detail of his neighborhood seems designed to inflict him with the feeling of isolation. The boy's house, like the street he lives on, is filled with decay. It is suffocating and “musty from being long enclosed.” It is difficult for him to establish any sort of connection to it. Even the history of the house feels unkind. The house's previous tenant, a priest, had died while living there. He “left all his money to institutions and the furniture of the house to his sister (Norton Anthology 2236).” It was as if he was trying to insure the boy's boredom and solitude. The only thing of interest that the boy can find is a bicycle pump, which is rusty and rendered unfit to play with. Even the “wild” garden is gloomy and desolate, containing but a lone apple tree and a few straggling bushes. It is hardly the sort of yard that a young boy would want. Like most boys, he has no voice in choosing where he lives, yet his surroundings have a powerful effect on him.