Lesson4-10专升本英语2班闫宇美.ppt

1、Lesson4Everyday Usefor your grandmama,Alice Walker,Alice Walker was born on February 9th 1944 in Eatonton,Georgia, as the eighth child of sharecropper parents. She grew up in the midst of violent racism and poverty which influenced her later writings. In Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia ,she stay

2、ed for two years, wrote her first novel and participated in civil rights demonstrations. She was even invited to Martin Luther Kings home because she had attended the Youth World Peace Festival in Helsinki, Finland. Later experiences in Uganda and Kenya most probably helped her to understand the Afr

3、ican culture. She returned to the Mississppi in the summer of 1966, and then met the Jewish civil rights law student Mel Leventhal to whom she soon got married. Due to the black-and-white nature of thire marriage and the fact that Leventhal was working for the NAACP(美国国家促进有色人种发展联合会), the couple had

4、deal with threats of violence. Her second novel, Meridian received such acclaim that Walker was allowed to concentrate full-time on her writing. After splitting up wuth Mel Leventhal, she fell in love with Robert Allen, the editor of Black Scholar and they lived together for 13 years. Of all her wor

5、ks one book has to be emphasized: in the spring of 1982, she became a celebrated writer with her famous book The Color Purple for which she received the greatest awards of her lifethe American Book Award in 1982 and one year later the Pulitzer Prize for Literiture. It was even made into a successful

6、 movie by Stephen Spielberg. Today she is still actively teaching at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.,About the author,Walkers 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) B

7、y the Light of My Fathers Smile (1998),Brief introduction about the text:,“Everyday Use” (1973) is included in the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 2nd edition, 1981. “Everyday Use” is one of the best-written short stories by Alice Walker. The story is very simple. With the same theme of Walkers o

8、ther works, “Everyday Use” is still focus on the relationship among black people. It describes three women: the mother and her two daughters Dee and Maggie. The two daughters are in sharp contrast in every conceivable way: appearance, character, personal experiences, etc. The story reaches its clima

9、x at the moment when Dee, the elder daughter, wants the two old quilts but is flatly refused by the mother, who intends to give them to Maggie, the younger one. The old quilts, made from the pieces of clothes worn by grandparents and great-grand-parents and stitched by Grandmas hand, symbolize the h

10、eritage of the black people. Their different feelings about the quilts reveal their different attitudes towards their heritage as blacks.,Text analysis:,The style of “Everyday Use for Your Grandma” is a short story. The following analysis is to focus on the main elements of the short story: plot, ch

11、aracters, point of view, setting, climax, theme and the methods to develop the theme. Plot: Dees coming back to fetch Grandmas everyday use (especially the old quilts) and her changed attitude toward them.,Main Characters,Mrs. Johnson (Mama) Mrs. Johnson introduces herself as “a large, big-boned wom

12、an with rough, man-working hands.” she “can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man”, she “can work outside all day”, she “can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog”. she is good “at a mans job” . Mrs. Johnsons first name is never mentioned. She i

13、s referred to by “Mama” and refers to herself only as “a Johnson” which may be a hint to the awareness of her family membership.,Maggie Maggie is “a kind of Cinderella” She is the younger one of the two daughters and in every aspect the absolute counterpart of Dee. She has a “thin body” she “knows s

14、he is not bright” and bears severe scars on her arms and legs from a fire that burned the Johnsons earlier house to the ground. Her lack of self-confidence both shows in the way she walks and the way she admires her elder sister “with a mixture of envy and awe” .She seems to be quite uneducated alth

15、ough Mrs. Johnson tells us that “sometimes Maggie reads to her” .But in contrast to Dee, Maggie loves her family and knows about its history and traditions.,Dee Dee does not really fit in her family: She is bright, confident and beautiful and likes to produce herself “hesitation is no part of her na

16、ture” .She cares much about the outer appearance. “At 16 she had a style of her own and knew what style was” .Since Dee left home to go to college in the North, she has changed her attitude towards the black tradition radically. She seemingly goes with the flow and is very much into the ideas of the

17、 Black Power movement. Despite her good education she is unable to see the value of her most important roots her American roots. The way Dee is presented makes the reader dislike her. She is arrogant and selfish and her “faultfinding power” hardly “ever let her have any friends” .But nevertheless “n

18、o is a word the world never learned to say to her”.,The structure of the story can be divided into two big parts: the first part is set before Dees arrival. It provides an inside view of the familys past and introduces the characters and their relationships towards each other. The second part begins

19、 when Dee arrives and lasts till the end of the story.,Rhetorical devices,1.Simile(明喻) e.g. Maggies brain is like an elephantt; She gasped like a bee had stung her. 2.Dubbed(排比) e.g. chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle,3.Metaphor(隐喻) e.g. stare down any disaster in her efforts 4. Symbol（象征） e.g. the quil