Lesson 4 Everyday Use For Your Grandmamma

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Lesson 4 Everyday UseFor Your Grandmamma

• By
• Alice Walker

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About the author

• Walker, Alice (1944- ), American author and poet,
  most of whose writing portrays the lives of poor,
  oppressed African American women in the early
  1900s.
• Born Alice Malsenior Walker in Georgia, she was
  educated at Spelman and Sarah Lawrence colleges.
  Walker's experiences during her senior year at
  Sarah Lawrence, including undergoing an abortion
  and making a trip to Africa, provided many of the
  book's themes, such as love, suicide, civil
  rights, and Africa. Walker received many
  additional honors and awards. She was also active
  in the movements for civil and women's rights.

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Walker's other works

• The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970)
• Meridian (1976)
• The Color Purple (1982)
• The Temple of My Familiar (1989)
• Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992)
• By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998)

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Text analysis

• Words and expressions
• Paraphrase some key sentences in the text
• Translation
• Figure of speech

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Words and expressions

• wavy characteristic of waves, resembling waves.
  Here the word describes the marks in wavy
  patterns on the clay ground left by the broom.
• an extended living room an enlarged living room
  by a new addition to the original space. Extended
  means prolonged, continued enlarged in
  influence, meaning, scope, etc.
• e.g. extended care nursing care provided for a
  limited time after a hospital stay
• extended family a group of relatives by blood,
  marriage or adoption, often including a nuclear
  family, living together, esp. three generations
  are involved.

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• overalls loose-fitting trousers of some strong
  cotton-cloth, often with a part extending up over
  the chest, worn, usually over other clothes, to
  protect against dirt and wear.
• sidle up move up sideways, especially in a shy
  or stealthy manner.

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• Stand off stand away, in a distance.
• Augusta city in eastern Georgia on the Savannah
  River. It is obvious that the family lives in the
  rural area in Georgia, a southern state in
  America.
• dimwit (slang) a stupid person, a simple
• organdy (or organdie) a very sheer, crisp cotton
  fabric used for dresses, curtains, etc
• to her graduation to attend her graduation
  ceremony
• pumps low-cut shoes without straps or ties

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• church songs hymns in praise or honor of God.
• hook to attack with the horns as by a bull.
• shingle a thin wedge-shaped piece of wood,
  slate, etc. laid with others in overlapping rows
  as a roof.
• furtive done or acting in a stealthy manner, as
  if to hinder observation surreptitious ,
  stealthy, sneaky
• hang about (or around) a. to cluster around b.
  (colloquial) to loiter or linger around
• washday a day, often the same day every week,
  when the clothes, linens, etc. of a household are
  washed

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• tripped over it mispronounced it, failed to say
  it correctly trip, to stumble, catch ones foot
  and lose ones balance. Here it is used
  figuratively, treating the name as something like
  a stone that causes one to stumble.
• e.g. The fisherman tripped over a root and fell
  into the river.

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• stumped (colloquial) puzzled, perplexed, baffled
• member (spoken English) remember
• a kind of dopey, hangdog look
• dopey (colloquial) mentally slow or confused
  stupid
• hangdog ashamed and cringing e.g. a hangdog
  expression
• portion ones lot destiny

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Paraphrase some key sentences in the text

• She thinks her sister has held life always in
  the palm of one hand
• Paraphrase She thinks that her sister has a firm
  control of her life.
• She washed us in a river of make-believe
• Paraphrase
• She imposed on us lots of falsity.

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• You can see me trying to move a second or two
  before I make it.
• Paraphrase You can see me trying to move my
  body a couple of seconds before I finally manage
  to push myself up.

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• Though, in fact, I probably could have carried it
  back beyond the Civil War through the branches.
• Paraphrase As I see Dee is getting tired of
  this, I don't want to go on either. In fact, I
  could have traced it far back before the Civil
  War along the branches of the family tree.

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• Every once in a while he and Wangero sent eye
  signals over my head.
• Paraphrase Now and then he and Dee communicated
  through eye contact in a secretive way.

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• Less than that.
• Paraphrase If Maggie put the old quilts on the
  bed, they would be in rags less than five years.
• This was the way she knew God to work.
• Paraphrase She knew this was God's arrangement.

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Translation

• In real life I am a large, big-boned woman
  with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I
  wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls
  during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as
  mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero
  weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice
  to get water for washing I can eat pork liver
  cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes
  steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a
  bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes
  with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to
  chill before nightfall. But of course all this
  does hot show on television. I am the way my
  daughter would want me to be a hundred pounds
  lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake.
  My hair glistens in the hot bright lights. Johnny
  Carson has much to do to keep up with my quick
  and witty tongue.

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• ????????,??????????????,?????????????????????????
  ????????????????????????????
  ???????????????????????????,????,?????????????????
  ,?????????,??????????????????,?????????????,??????
  ??????????????,????????????,??????????????????????
  ????????????,???????????????????,??????????????
  ????,????????,???????????????????

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• 1)???????????????????
• 2)???????????????
• 3)??????????,???????
• 4)???????????????????????????????
• 5)??????????,???????????

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• ??
• 1) A big fire burned to the ground more than 300
  homes in the slum neighborhood.
• 2) Let's talk about the matter over a cup of
  coffee.
• 3) As long as we stick to these principles, we
  will surely be successful.
• 4) Their way of life could be traced to the
  ancient traditions handed down to them by their
  ancestors more than one thousand years ago.
• 5) She was shocked at the news, but before long
  she recomposed herself.

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Figure of Speech

•  Hyperbole
•  Understatement
• Personification
• Metonymy
• Sarcasm
• Parallelism
• Metaphor

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Theme

• The story addresses itself to the dilemma of
  African Americans who, in striving to escape
  prejudice and poverty, risk a terrible
  deracination, a sundering from all that has
  sustained and defined them.
• Walker is saying that true art not only
  represents its culture, but is an inseparable
  part of that culture. The manner in which the
  quilts are treated shows Walker's view of how art
  should be treated
• Alice Walker is using the quilts, and the fate of
  those quilts, to make the point that art can only
  have meaning if it remains connected to the
  culture it sprang from.

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Structure Analysis

• Part 1 (1-2) General introduction
• Preparation made to receive Dee
  hinting the relationship between
• Mother and Dee is alienated the
  relationship between the two
• sisters is unfriendly and tense.
• Part 2 (3-12) Description of Mother and two
  sisters
• (3 - 4) what Mother expected to be
• (5 - 6) what Mother actually was
• (7-12) Description of the two sisters
• Part 3 (13-16) More about Mother and Dee
• Part 4 (17-the last but one para) Dees visit
• (17-23) Dee and her boyfriends
  arrival
• (24-25) Dees new name
• (26-28) about Dees boyfriend
• (29- ) Dee wanted the everyday use
• Part 5 (the last para) Mother and Maggie felt
  relieved to see Dee leave

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• Thank you