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Summary Of Dusting By Julia Alvarez

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“Dusting” is a short poem written by Julia Alvarez. The overall conflict is about a young girl who strives to be the complete opposite of her mother. The story takes place in her home where she is physically writing her name in all sorts of furniture. From cabinets, dining room tables and chairs, to glass mirrors and bookshelfs, she writes her name in anything visible. At the very beginning of the tale she begins to scribble her name normally in dusty cabinets. She makes it clear that her goal is write it as much as possible to make a stand from her mother. One of the most repetitive actions faced in this story besides the constant name writing, is her mother’s movement to erase her daughter’s name wherever she wrote it down. Her mother used many cleaning supplies to wipe off the name and both their actions reflect more towards the story. “Dusting” is a poem that shows how a simple metaphor can reflect more into a daughter’s concern to be more than what her mother has become. …show more content…

What striked me was how different the daughter wanted to be from her mother, solely because personally, I strive to become at least half the woman my mom was to me. It wasn’t until the end of the poem where the daughter’s true intentions lied. Given the information from the very first stanza, the reader can only question the purpose of all the name writing. I paused and thought to myself, “why would she go through the struggle and write her name everywhere, every second of the day?” Then after reading the last stanza, it clicked. She wanted to remind herself that she is going to do something worth more in this life, as opposed to her mother. That is the central conflict of the

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