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Alice Walker To Hell With Dying Analysis

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Alice Walker, the gifted author and activist, paints a picture of what it is like to be a young African American woman living in America through her connections to feminism, Walker’s life and her experience with loss. Feminism plays a key role in many of Alice Walker’s pieces. Especially in “To Hell with Dying” the main narrator pushes the boundary of the many stereotypes of females to be dependent and not self-sufficient peoples. Walker tends to portray women as strong people who fight for what they want and will not stop until they get it. According to Louis H. Pratt, “...she has chosen to create a super abundance of kind, loving women who triumph in spite of the odds, played off against weak, self-centered, violent men” (Pratt 42). Walker …show more content…

It is important to note that Walker does not make women completely heartless, she uses their compassion and love to create that strength from within. Walker also broke men stereotypes of being aggressive and bossy which helped emphasize the strong women of her stories. For example, the narrator’s brother was very giving when it came to saving Mr. Sweet because “he let me do all the reviving- he had done it years before I was born and so he was glad to be able to pass it on to someone new” (Walker 3). There is a thoughtfulness and loving spirit behind this action that is not usually portrayed through men. The narrator being so excited to help plays into the idea that women can be very caring but not by losing any integrity or strength. Along with breaking female stereotypes, Walker also defies what the typically man should act like. Mr. Sweet, the main character, suffers from substance abuse and is often found in near death experiences. “As the female narrator grows independent and gets ahead in a traditionally masculine way, Sweet becomes more feminine…” with his health declining rapidly (Hollister 90). He needs the people in his life to care for him in order for him to not die. The narrator

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Alice Paul was raised and also taught, by her parents, that women and men are both equal. She grew up to be a caseworker in London which led her to realizing the struggles of women’s rights. She wanted to do something about how women did not have the ability to vote so she joined England’s suffragists. Which led to Alice to learn how to generate publicity. The knowledge Alice gained from being an activist was through arrests, force feedings, imprisonments, and hunger strikes.

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This brings to light the difficulties experienced by African American women who were denied access to possibilities for employment and higher education. The poem serves as a timely reminder of the value of knowledge and empathy in helping those who encounter structural obstacles to reaching their full potential. The protagonist of "Woman Work" is portrayed as an outsider who is denied the same possibilities

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Alice Walker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, African-American novelist and poet; she is also a known advocate for women’s rights. Walker gave a commencement speech on Founders’ Day at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Her piece, titled “Oppressed Hair”, talks about growth and hitting a ceiling with every milestone that a person reaches. This piece appeals to college students or anyone that is fighting to accept or find their own identity. In her speech, Walker dismisses the value of her own work by claiming that it is “to entertain and amuse”, this dismissal allows the audience to interpret her words in a way that benefits them the most.

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1320 Words | 6 Pages

Mercy is portrayed as a female force because of her altruism and compassion in a world that is filled with constant conflict. By portraying a kind force as female, Stanton reiterates how women have the ability to change not only violent actions, but a violent world. Nature is also illustrated as a “loving mother” to show that if Mother Nature can control all of the Earth and keep it in harmony, women have this same feminine power (Stanton). The use of literary devices throughout Stanton’s speech affirms the oppression of women and the prevalence of women’s ability to stabilize society, even in times of discord, by subtly placing the worldly imbalance as the

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1052 Words | 5 Pages

The speaker is uneducated, so the writing in the first person is readable for beginners as well as educated adults. Walker addresses the audience specifically to to create deeper imagery, where the audience can add their own experiences to the story, such as “You’ve no doubt seen those TV shows” (46). The speaker directly addresses the audience, and so anyone reading the story, whether a minority, or the majority, will be connected to the story. Purpose: Walker describes the impact of oppression on the relationship between mother and daughter, and how the oppressed view themselves.

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394 Words | 2 Pages

Alice Walker was born in 1944. She was the youngest of eight children. She had an unfortunate accident. When she was eight years old. Walker's eye was blinded by a shot from a BB gun.

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1682 Words | 7 Pages

Female African American writers tend to focus more on the experience of black women (which we will consider for this novel). Black women are often introduced as the minority in the race, especially seen in writings during the 1970’s. Most of these writings have female characters who have domestic duties, which can reveal the passing of traditions and cultures from one generation to the next and the role of a woman in an inconvenienced household. They also deal with the image and perception of the Black woman, whether through looks, skin color, or her voice. The woman’s narrative is often formed gradually, often times alongside a woman who has already discovered herself, but we must consider that “it may take the form of exploring one’s own abilities, needs, and desires” (Tyson, 391).

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Everyday Use by Alice Walker explores the struggles experienced by African-American women due to racial identity and racism in rural and urban areas. It is told in the first person narration giving details of the problems of the minority race during the slave era in America due to racism. The author uses literary devices such as symbolism, the setting, and narrator’s point of view to highlight the plight of women such as racism in the story both in rural and urban dwelling. The story’s setting is in the yard of the narrator enabling the reader to familiarize with the place in the rural areas.

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1553 Words | 7 Pages

"The Hell with Dying", by Alice Walker is a short story about how the narrator is coping with experiencing her first love and first death. The narrator talks about how her neighbor Mr. Sweet, who always threatens to die until the narrator and her siblings come and revive Mr. Sweet. The story indicates that laughter and love can be the best medicine and can help someone who is experiencing depression. The story portrays the conflict of growing up and experiencing love, death and unhappiness. Mr. Sweet shows the side of depression and failure that Alice Walker might have faced had she not pushed her way to success.

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730 Words | 3 Pages

Alice Walker the author of the Flowers”, was inspired to write this story because of the tragedy that has happened to multiple black Americans and how it has affected their human rights. This story describes scenery that may have happened around South America starting off with a girl named Myop, a ten-year old girl who explores the world around her, unaware of the secrets the world beyond holds. In the first paragraph, Alice Walker clearly emphasises Myops purity and young innocence with the quote “She skipped lightly from hen house to pigpen.” This demonstrates how happy Myop is in this setting, we can identify she feels safe here, “ She felt light and good in the warm sun.”

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3280 Words | 14 Pages

Afro-American women writers present how racism permeates the innermost recesses of the mind and heart of the blacks and affects even the most intimate human relationships. While depicting the corrosive impact of racism from social as well as psychological perspectives, they highlight the human cost black people have to pay in terms of their personal relationships, particularly the one between mother and daughter. Women novelists’ treatment of motherhood brings out black mothers’ pressures and challenges for survival and also reveals their different strategies and mechanisms to deal with these challenges. Along with this, the challenges black mothers have to face in dealing with their adolescent daughters, who suffer due to racism and are heavily influenced by the dominant value system, are also underlined by these writers. They portray how a black mother teaches her daughter to negotiate the hostile, wider world, and prepares her to face the problems and challenges boldly and confidently.

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The women in the novel, such as Sonya and Dunya are spiritual connected far more than the men. However, this leads them to help the men in making decisions that will leave a major impact on them. The women in the novel are shown as having strong relationships with the men. Almost all of this strength that they have come from their Christian faith and spiritual development, these both play a big role in their relationships.

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827 Words | 4 Pages

Alice Walker, the author of an essay “In Search of Our Mother’s Garden”, is a famous American writer and activist. She speaks for the rights of people and helps the offended while supporting revolutionists and leaders whom she considers to be bringing change to the world and seek for its transformation. Her essay, “In Search of Our Mother’s Garden”, dedicated to the struggle of African American women, is based on the feminist insights of the author. Based on her own experience, the experience of others, and the historical events, the author reveals the topic of the suppressed talent of African American women, of their lost artistic skills resulting from slavery and the imposed on them role. However, Walker point out that somehow the dark past has not completely damaged the creative power of the mothers and grandmothers since it has manifested itself in the small things they did for the people they loved.

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1029 Words | 5 Pages

Dee approaches culture by decontextualising it, while Maggie and Mama relate to it with a kind of ‘organic criticality’. The former stance is mere rhetoric and the later one is womanist. In one of her interviews, Alice Walker identifies three cycles of Black Woman she would explore in her woman’s writing: 1.

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