Final Exam - Book Report/Review Example

She was dominant, but believed that only having a husband would make life right for her daughter, crippled and shy. None of them really understood the others' needs and true feelings, as they pulled in different directions to achieve hopes and dreams, and in the end, failed. They were not a happy family. Mama was the head of a divided family in Everyday Use, an honest, hard-working woman with no illusions. She accepted that Dee/Wangero had changed and left the family traditions and heritage behind to define herself with a new African American identity.

She appreciated Maggie as a physically flawed and shy, slow thinking person, "Like good looks and money, quickness passes her by." Mama saw that Maggie knew the true meaning of family and history, which was why she hugged her and gave her the quilts Dee wanted; she and Maggie kept to the old values of how people and not just appearances mattered. There were two against one in the end. Granny Weatherall loved her children, but was maybe not so fair to all of them as she could have been. Hapsy, her daughter who died in childbirth, was her favorite, while she was unkind about Cornelia who loved and cared for her.

She was undoubtedly the head of the household, as could be seen in her thoughts about how none of them did a thing without first consulting her. They may well have feared her. She had to take the role of mother and father and thought she did a good job, and helped others, she enjoyed the power and control this gave her. "It had been a hard pull, but not too much for her" and she still believed that as she lay dying; she was indispensable, in her view. 2. Prideful Behaviors and Outcomes in Everyday Use and The Jilting of Granny Weatherall : Mama and Granny were both proud of their hard-working abilities to keep going and look after their families.

Both mentioned their physical strength. Mama said: "I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as any manI can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing;" and Granny thought, "She had fenced in a hundred acres once, digging the post holes herself" Yet both felt they lacked perfection, Mama because she could not measure up to the dream of how she believed Dee wanted her to be. Granny, "I hardly ever lost one of them!" yet she lost Hapsy. Because of her pride in being a strong head of the family, she belittled Cornelia as a person and good housekeeper.

"In her (granny's0 day she had kept a better house and got more work done." It was this pride in her own importance that caused her to die a hard and bitter death, refusing to let go and thinking that God had jilted her at the end. The most prideful person in Everyday Use was Dee. She took on the faade of a liberated Black person, in line with the 1970s, but cast away her true history, as if it was beneath her. For that reason, she was not given the quilts, as she would "hang them" for show, and not use them.

Dee always got what she wanted; Maggie got little and was humble and true to her heritage. Dee's pride took her away from her roots; she used objects as artifacts to define her racial pride, not acknowledging the importance of the people who mattered, and so lost her real self.4. Characteristics of Oedipus as a Greek Tragic Hero: The hero must be a person of renown and