The main source of conflict in this short story is Dee, or “Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo” (25), and her equally new-age male companion. These two clash with the mother of Dee and her other daughter, Maggie, both of whom live in an old, cheap house, with “three rooms”, a “tin roof”, and “no real windows” (14). The style of this house is one source of the conflict, as it is “just like the one that burned” (14); that is to say, it is decrepit and shoddy. The “one that burned” was an apparent embarrassment to the person formerly known as Dee: when it burned, her mother was surprised she didn’t “dance around the ashes” (10), and Mama Johnson can’t believe it when Wangero takes pictures of her and Maggie “and the house” (23). However, this newfound appreciation expressed by Wangero for the timeworn is quickly identified as nothing more than a passing fad, a generational hobby that neither Mama Johnson nor Maggie can understand, but something that they can recognize as completely ersatz.
There are many indications throughout the story that these emotions expressed by Wangero are not genuine. For example, when she makes a big fuss about the old quilts, Mama Johnson tells us that just a few years prior, when Dee went to college, she thought the quilts were “old-fashioned” and “out of style” (67). Another instance of insincerity is when Wangero is taking all the pictures upon her arrival: she makes sure to capture the most ancient things, which is namely the house and Mama Johnson herself. Again, before Dee went away to college, she would bring very few people around to the house, as mentioned earlier. Finally, Wangero is false in her emotions toward her own family, which is worst of all. She puts on a loving, appreciative façade for “Hakim-a-barber” (42), when in reality she cares very little for her family, as she has always. At sixteen, Dee considered her mother and her sister as “dimwits” (11), and there is no reason now to believe she feels otherwise. Her true nature is revealed when, after being denied the quilts, she storms off in a huff to the car, where she tells Mama Johnson, “You just don’t understand” (79). She then puts on her sunglasses (82), perhaps to hide her disgust from her family. In essence, though Wangero claims to be a new person, she has all the emotions of the old Dee: namely, embarrassment for and disgust towards her backwards family.
And yet, despite these obvious feelings of resentment, Mama Johnson and Maggie do not seek, and perhaps do not wish to seek, to change anything about their lives. They are set in their ways, not caring how Wangero thinks about them; after she and Hakim-a-barber leave, the mother and her daughter go back doing what they had been doing before, what they have been doing all their lives: relaxing in their yard with a dip of snuff while the sun goes down (83). They are both, if not happy, content with their lives, unlike Wangero, who is in her heart ashamed of hers. Mama Johnson and her daughter go about the same rituals as “Big Dee” and "Grandma Dee” (75): sewing, cleaning, cooking, having a dip of snuff. And, in this sense, they understand their heritage more than Wangero ever will, no matter what she may think (81). Because Maggie would both appreciate and use the quilts, and understand and remember how they got their, they would mean so much more to her; Wangero, on the other hand, would “hang them” (72), which would destroy the very meaning of those quilts. They were made to be used, not admired; they were made to be worn-down and raggedy, not preserved. It is in this aspect that Wangero confirms just how little she “understands” her heritage – she admires these objects of her past (which include her family) almost as if shopping at an antiques store, whereas Mama Johnson and Maggie appreciate the objects for what they really are: reminders of the people they have loved. In this regard, Wangero, or Dee, will never understand what that truly means. (690)
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2 comments:
I thought your juxtaposition between Maggie/Mamma's lives and Dee's life was interesting in depicting the differences about understanding heritage, roots, and identitiy. You had really good examples to show their contrasting viewpoints; the short story made much more sense after you read it aloud. I really liked the part where you said the quilt was suppose to be worn out and used: it captured the main essence of both tradition and family within the story. I also thought the organization of your essay worked because the paragraph on Dee's lack of genuine emotions was a great way to set up the distinction between the sisters before the third paragraph.
Harry, this was truly a fine piece of work. Your points were pretty clear and well organized throughout the essay. There are just a few parts of this that I would like to specifically comment on. I feel as though you jump into the main point of your essay a little two quickly, and maybe a sentence or two introduction would help ease into the meat of the essay more. With your current first and second sentences, I think that you should find someway to combine the two, because after reading the first sentence I only know of one source of the conflict, and in its current form that first sentence can be taken as Dee conflicts with herself or maybe clashes with her male companion, when you clearly mean that she clashes with her mother and sister as you state in the next sentence. Consolidating those two sentences would start your essay in a better way with less confusion. Also, it seems as though you want to highlight the conflict of the story in your essay, yet outside the first three sentences, no words such as "clashes", "conflicts", "contrasts", or "differs" appears. In my opinion, the addition of these words to parts of your essay would help keep the main point of your essay present throughout.
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