Everyday Use By William Balkner Analysis
When people are young they live in their modern world a young world, but when they grow old the world does not grow old with them it leaves that generation behind for a younger generation. The old living in a new and young world is what inspires writers to tell stories about people who can cope with the young world like in “Miss Brill”. In Miss brill there is an old woman that isolates herself from the real world trying to preserve the old and shelter it from the new. Furthermore, another story that is influenced by this theme of the young world not understanding the ways of the old. Is the short story “Everyday Use” a story about a girl that doesn’t understand the importance of the traditional meaning of the quilts that she has inherited.
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Miss Emily grew up during the end or ending of slavery and only one thing from that time besides Miss Emily was left,“ Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps – an eyesore among eyesores”. Miss Emily’s house was an old plantation house from the glory days of the south but after war and time it is the last of its kind on a street once filled with palaces of the old south. Just like miss Emily her house was being coquettishly destroyed by time slowly decaying and flirting with the realization that like the old south her and her house would be forgotten. At one point Miss Emily tried to join the new society but, “Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies' magazines”. Here is the transition from the old south when Emily was young to the new south an America in transition away from the only world Emily knows. As Miss Emily's former students don’t want their children exposed to the way of life Emily represents the old south. And just from the presumed influence that Emily’s generation had on society she is cast from the modern young world to slowly disappear. In conclusion Miss Emily clung to a world of happiness and fortune, and because that world was not accepted in the new south she was not able to conform with the new south that took over all that she
Miss Emily grew up during the end or ending of slavery and only one thing from that time besides Miss Emily was left,“ Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps – an eyesore among eyesores”. Miss Emily’s house was an old plantation house from the glory days of the south but after war and time it is the last of its kind on a street once filled with palaces of the old south. Just like miss Emily her house was being coquettishly destroyed by time slowly decaying and flirting with the realization that like the old south her and her house would be forgotten. At one point Miss Emily tried to join the new society but, “Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies' magazines”. Here is the transition from the old south when Emily was young to the new south an America in transition away from the only world Emily knows. As Miss Emily's former students don’t want their children exposed to the way of life Emily represents the old south. And just from the presumed influence that Emily’s generation had on society she is cast from the modern young world to slowly disappear. In conclusion Miss Emily clung to a world of happiness and fortune, and because that world was not accepted in the new south she was not able to conform with the new south that took over all that she