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Controversial Women In The Life You Save May Be Your Own, By Alice Walker

1077 Words5 Pages

Short stories are a delicacy in literature. Some short stories have comparable plots, themes, or even characters. Lucynell Crater from “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery O’Connor and Maggie Johnson from “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker are two controversial women created in the American Literature movement. Lucynell and Maggie are both vulnerable characters that depend on others for survival in life through different experiences of innocence, race, and class in the American South. While Lucynell and Maggie both represent innocence and goodness in their stories, they both face physical challenges in their everyday lives. Lucynell “…who is completely deaf and has never said a word in her life …” (p 430) lived a simple life with her …show more content…

Lucynell is raised only by her mother on a small family farm that needs extensive maintenance for holes in the front and back steps, the need for a new hog pen, and a fence that needs restoring (430). The need for a man or someone to provide for her is why Lucynell’s mother married her to the first guy available. As stated earlier, it did not work out for Lucynell when she was abandoned by her newlywed. Likewise, Maggie did not live the luxury life either. She was arranged to get married as well to a mossy toothed man named John Thomas (914). Although her independence throughout the story outshines the thought of her getting married. The difference with Maggie is that she is in tune with her family and traditions despite her poverty. She embodies the values of her hereditary past like when Dee asked about the dasher, she knew that Aunt Dee’s first husband whittled it (917). Little details add up and prove how much Maggie values and appreciates her family legacy. Both women were classified as rural poor people. (392). President Harrison A. Williams Jr. wanted to help people like them and read a speech about the need for rural social welfare reforms. Also, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s antipoverty task force and civil right activists exposed the reality of poverty to show the nation leading to action. There was a massive problem with poverty in the rural south and Lucynell and Maggie were just a couple examples of

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