A Step For the future - Essay Example

3 March, Everyday Use: I am very much impressed by certain characteristic featuresof the character “Mama” in the story Everyday Use. I believe that an individual’s perspective should be very optimistic in life and he/she should only worry about things that make a difference in a meaningful sense. Mama is unlike women who are weight conscious. Mama loves to put on weight because she thinks that the more fat she puts on, the better she will be protected against cold. She is a rough and tough lady, and can face any situation in life with full courage and determination.

Mama says, “In real life I am a large, big.boned woman with rough, man.working hands” (Walker). Although she is very weak financially, yet she has remained composed through all thick and thin of life. To me, Mama is a role model because being a woman does not make her deprived of any thing in any sense. Having studied Mama as a character in Everyday Use, I have come to realize that much of the injustice women conventionally complain of can be attributed to their self perception of a weaker sex.

It is their own sense of delicacy and insecurity that makes them underestimate themselves, and the opposite gender takes advantage of it. If women leave underestimating themselves, no man can undermine them, and Mama stays as an evidence for this. A & P: Having read A & P, the biggest lesson that I have learnt is that men’s preferences and sense of responsibility in life change as they mature. For a man who is as young and immature as Sammy, gaining approval of a girl passing by may mean more than job, that is the most fundamental demand of a mature man.

Sammy enters into an extremely useless and unproductive argument with the store manager for girls whom he has seen for the first, and perhaps the last time in his life in the store. And if we analyze what he argues over with the store manager, the finding further shatters his image of a morally strong and responsible man. Sammy argues with the manager for he has forbidden the girls to wear revealing clothes in public as it is the rule in his store. Although it is not rational to stereotype boys in the age of Sammy as “immature”, yet there does exist a greater attraction towards the opposite sex when boys are younger, though the level of decency and maturity varies from individual to individual.

I would not say that many young boys would be as stupid as Sammy to risk their job for momentary lust. However, I have learnt that every young person should control his/her feelings to the maximum extent. Although no youngster in a normal state of mind would be as idiotic as Sammy has been, yet in the period of youth, there is little guarantee that an otherwise responsible individual would also act responsibly when in the shoes of Sammy. After having ruined his career, Sammy realizes, “…how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter” (Updike).

Works cited: Walker, Alice. “Use.” n.d. Web. 3 Mar. 2011. . Updike, John. A & P: Lust in the aisles. Redpath Press, 1986. Print.