Through a story of danger and a childlike characterization of Ma, Torres demonstrates Ma does not have inherent motherly qualities. In the chapter “The Lake,” Paps intends to teach Ma and the narrator to swim, an endeavor which almost drowns both of them. The narrator describes the episode saying, “Ma who had nearly drowned me, who had screamed and cried and dug her nails down into me” was “more frenzied and wild than I had ever known her to be” (Torres 21). Almost dragging down the narrator with her, Ma does not exhibit motherly qualities. Instead of protecting her son, who is in the same perilous situation, she protects herself, an action which does not reflect empathy, protection, and reliability. Using words like “screamed, “cried,” and “frenzied,” Torres characterizes the mother as young and wild, making her more childlike than the narrator. Like an animal, she digs “her nails down into” her son. In this moment of danger, she abandons her human side, …show more content…
Through the scene in “The Lake,” Torres demonstrates motherly qualities are, in fact, not instinctual. Torres contrasts the inexperienced Ma with an older, more mature Ma, demonstrating that, over time, mothers develop motherly qualities. Torres describes a solemn last morning, years after the scene in “The Lake,” before the son is sent to an institution to be “institutionalized [to fix his sexuality]” (Torres 117). When illustrating the mother, Torres writes, “[l]ook how she enters, holding a stack of folded clothes, jeans on the bottom, a sweatshirt, some boxer shorts, and on top a pair of socks bundled together. Except for her wild, beautiful face, she looks like a servile woman, a television mom” (Torres 122-123). Torres presents a different mother from “The Lake.” Ma is folding clothes, a stereotypical motherly activity.
Although, a mother’s determination in the short story “I Stand Here Ironing” mother face with an intense internal conflict involving her oldest daughter Emily. As a single mother struggle, narrator need to work long hours every day in order to support her family. Despite these criticisms, narrator leaves Emily frequently in daycare close to her neighbor, where Emily missing the lack of a family support and loves. According to the neighbor states, “You should smile at Emily more when you look at her” (Olsen 225). On the other hand, neighbor gives the reader a sense that the narrator didn’t show much affection toward Emily as a child. The narrator even comments, “I loved her. There were all the acts of love” (Olsen 225). At the same time, narrator expresses her feeling that she love her daughter. Until, she was not be able to give Emily as much care as she desire and that gives her a sense of guilt, because she ends up remarrying again. Meanwhile narrator having another child named Susan, and life gets more compli...
First in “Everyday Use” you recognize the differences in all three women throughout the story. The mama
“I am a large, big boned woman with rough, man-working hands” Mama describes of herself in the short story Everyday Use by Alice Walker. Mama, who additionally takes the role of narrator, is a lady who comes from a wealth of heritage and tough roots. She is never vain, never boastful and most certainly never selfish. She speaks only of her two daughters who she cares deeply for. She analyzes the way she has raised them and how much she has cared too much or too little for them, yet most of all how much they value their family. Mama never speaks of herself, other than one paragraph where she describes what she does. “My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing” (Walker, 60). She does not need to tell readers who she is, for her descriptions of what she does and how her family interacts, denotes all the reader needs to know. Although Mama narrates this story rather bleakly, she gives readers a sense of love and sense of her inner strength to continue heritage through “Everyday Use”.
An interesting thing about Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” is the fact that it seems to be told from the Mama’s eyes, rather than from one of the, arguably, main characters. This only allows the reader to see Mama’s bias in the entire situation. Because of this bias between her children, the reader can see the stark contrast of the two sisters. Alice tries to portray the importance of embracing heritage and the vulgarity of disregarding the purpose of things for one’s own pleasure.
The relationship between a mother and her family is one of strength and commitment. A mother will go through long anything to make sure her family is safe. In 1982, in Lawrenceville Georgia, Mrs. Angela Cavallo saved her son, Tony Cavallo,who was pinned down by his Chevrolet Impala. The Chevrolet slipped off his car jack and fell on Tony. Angela was able to lift the car and then provide CPR for her son and saved his life. Family is the most important thing, and Ma demonstrates her maternal characteristics throughout the book to show that sticking together saves families.
The illusion of time, particularly the loss or stoppage of time, is apparent in both Peter
David’s illustrations shows an intricate but vivid and painful memory of his childhood. His mother, Betty influenced his life in a way that he could not understand at the time. He did not understand the reasons behind some of her attitudes or the peculiar way that she communicated with him. In the first pages of the book David stated: “Mama had her little cough… once
mother, and narrative point of view, to illustrate the tension between the two protagonists and
It is easily inferred that the narrator sees her mother as extremely beautiful. She even sits and thinks about it in class. She describes her mother s head as if it should be on a sixpence, (Kincaid 807). She stares at her mother s long neck and hair and glorifies virtually every feature. The narrator even makes reference to the fact that many women had loved her father, but he chose her regal mother. This heightens her mother s stature in the narrator s eyes. Through her thorough description of her mother s beauty, the narrator conveys her obsession with every detail of her mother. Although the narrator s adoration for her mother s physical appearance is vast, the longing to be like her and be with her is even greater.
The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels. Many of them were delicious in the role; one of them was the embodiment of every womanly grace and charm. If her husband did not adore her, he was a brute, deserving of death by slow torture. Her name was Adèle Ratignolle” (Chopin 8). The mother women were to be respected, but also pitied, these were women who were trapped within their social rules. Some, like Madame Ratignolle, were content with the role of just being an adoring mother while others, like Edna Pontieller, wanted to shed the shroud of matronly duties and be free to do as she
While speaking to her husband in regards to their son, the woman asked, “... could you get him a clean pair of pajamas out of the laundry. ” The woman cares if her son is clean and maintained, the same way she cares if his stomach is full. In fact, she even made “eight molds of the boy’s favorite custard,” knitted him and his father sweaters and provided them both with “two weeks supply of fresh laundered sheets and shirts and towels.” The woman is a mother and a wife but, she has a reserved way of fulfilling her roles. She does not find it necessary to play motherhood and a housekeeper every day or all day long. Evidently, the woman is still different from a typical mother; she is still dealing with depression that keeps her miserable and isolated from her husband and
Marie, who is a product of an abusive family, is influenced by her past, as she perceives the relationship between Callie and her son, Bo. Saunders writes, describing Marie’s childhood experiences, “At least she’d [Marie] never locked on of them [her children] in a closet while entertaining a literal gravedigger in the parlor” (174). Marie’s mother did not embody the traditional traits of a maternal fig...
Throughout the story, the narrator speaks of her mother’s grace and in moments when that grace was put under pressure,
As the matriarch and hoariest associate of the kindred, Mama is a tribute to the capacity of fantasy, since she has lingered to view the fantasy she and her helpmate partake in answered. With the recent domicile, they are well on their route to the achieved fulfillment of their fantasy. Mama’s ultimate instant in the accommodations and the bearing of her flora reveal that although she’s jocund in the matter of going, she preserves to nurture the recollections she has accrued all through her existence. Hansberry signals, then, that the sweetness of fantasy fulfillment is attended by the sweetness of the fantasy itself. Mama hesitates on her route out of the accommodations to reveal honor and recognition of accountability for the flinty service that served in developing the fantasy to proceed
While still not having learned her lesson, the narrator told her mom that she was “a real failure of a Mom” at the beginning of the story. Later on, her perspective changed drastically. After the narrator's father chased her up and down the house, the mother convinces the father to go blow off some steam while she went and talked to the narrator about why they were so concerned. Even though the narrator was in a bad mood, she still accepted her mother's love. “I wailed, but we both knew I was glad she was there, and I needed only a moment's protest to save face before opening that door” (Alvarez, 8). While the two where bonding, they wrote a short, two page essay together. The mother was proud of not only herself but also her daughter