Success and Failure in Alice Walker’s To Hell With Dying Essay example

Success and Failure in Alice Walkers To quarry With Dying Alice Walkers To Hell With Dying appears on the surface to be a story of a man who has many near-death experiences. However, I believe that the story of Mr. pleasing shows the office of depression and failure that Alice Walker might have faced had she non pushed her way to success. Mr. sweetness grew up in a time point in time where the life between whites and blacks was very segregated. However, Mr. Sweet had been ambitious as a boy, wanted to be a doctor or lawyer or sailor, only to find that black men fare better if they were non (Walker 1143). When he realized this defeat he turned to fishing as his only claim to doing anything extraordinarily well (1143). This failure seemed to overcome Mr. Sweet as he turned to the bottle as a form of sanctuary. Mr. Sweet was constantly on the verge of being blind inebriated (1144) however, to the kids this make him the perfect playmate. Often when Mr. Sweet was feeling good (1 144), he would dance intimately and play in the yard with the children. When he was in this state he was just as vulnerable as they were. In fact, most of the time the children won the battles. An ironic behavior that Mr. Sweet has in this story, however, is that we take away about him playing with the neighbors children, but we never read about him playing with his own child. Maybe this is because of the second failure that occurred in Mr. Sweets life. When he was younger he had to marry Miss Mary, for she was pregnant with his child he was not sure that Joe Lee, Miss Marys foil, was also his baby (1144). Mr. Sweet had been in love with another woman though. He had made up a song that he played on his guitar on this unhappy part of his life. When Mr. Sw... ..., was another Mr. Sweet. However, this Mr. Sweet took her route of success. He explicit his pain through the poetry he wrote so that whoever wanted to could read it and feel the pain that he had to overcome. Mr. Sweet, b y showing Alice Walker what would go along to her if she surrendered to the racism of the outside world, helped her achieve success. Works Cited Walker, Alice. To Hell With Dying. The Harper Anthology of Fiction. Ed. unpolished Barnet. New York HarperCollins, 1991. 1143-1147. Walker, Alice. Remembering Mr. Sweet. The Harper Anthology of Fiction. Ed. Sylvan Barnet. New York HarperCollins, 1991. 1147-1149. Works Consulted Harrison, Faye. musical composition Against The Grain Cultural Politics Of Difference In The Work Of Alice Walker. Women composing Culture. Ed. R. Behar and D.A Gordon. University of California Press, 1195. 233-245.