Imagery In Those Winter Sundays

When the general public is asked what the definition of family is, the answers can vary significantly depending on differing life experiences. Depending on what people go through in life can change the general idea of family. Although some may argue that in order to be considered family you have to be blood-related or that families shouldn’t have issues and should always be perfect, which are both proven to be false throughout the short stories “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is The Self”, and “Writing about What Haunts Us.” In actuality, family is someone who cares for the overall well-being of others, who will put other family members before themselves, and someone who wants the best for another individual, which is seen in my short stories

Hayden writes, “Then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze…When the rooms were warm he’d call.”(Hayden 17). His dad cared for him so much that he would get up early to start the fire in order to make sure when Hayden got up he felt warm. His dad did not want him to wake up cold like he had to, so he did everything he could do to make sure he woke up warm. Not only did he start the fire early but he did it after working all week with “cracked hands”. This also shows that Hayden’s dad cared for him because he was willing to keep working with his cracked hands to make sure his son could get up in the morning without being cold. This made him feel cared for and loved because his dad was caring for him, which is a part of the definition of family. Another example of family being someone who cares for someone's overall well-being is seen in the short story “Beauty: When The Other Dance Is the Self” written by Alice Walker. Walker explains how she is being bullied at school since she is blind in one eye. The bullying gets so bad her parents send her back to her old school (Walker 37). While this may not seem like a huge detail but if you think deeper about it, Walker’s parents care about her so much that they are willing to send her to live somewhere else in order for her to enjoy school. This had to be insanely hard for her parents to do, but they wanted the bullying to stop so they sent her back to her old school even though they were going to miss her immensely. This is what family is when someone cares about someone else so much they are willing to do whatever it takes to make them happy. This short story is just one example of why family is so important and why everyone needs