Summary Of The Century Quilt

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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 poem is structured into three stanzas about the quilts relationship to the family. The first stanza describes how the speaker fell in love with the blanket and how she planned to inherit it. Then the speaker goes on to say in the second stanza “Now I’ve found a quilt I’d like to die under” (13-14). In the last stanza the speaker describes how in the future she might dream under that quilt and how she might dream of her unborn children. The speaker states in the third stanza “I think I’d have good dream … Within the dream of myself perhaps I’d meet my son or my other child, as yet unconceived” (21, 41-43). Each stanza is structured into a grammatical tense and relates to the word in the title, century. The first stanza discusses the past, the second stanza discusses the present, and the final …show more content…

In addition, the words chosen also convey a sense of imagery. For example, the first stanza describes the blanket as a dark green when the speaker describes how she fell asleep in army green issued supply. Then in the second stanza the speaker describes it in a way to appeal to the reader’s visual senses. She states “Six Van Dyke brown squares, two white ones, and one square the yellowbrown of Mama’s cheeks” (15-17). The speaker continues her description by stating how her grandmother dreamed she was a girl again under the quilt. All the descriptions chosen by the speaker appeal to the reader’s emotions and allow the reader to visualize what might the quilt

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