Maggie A Girl Of The Streets Literary Analysis Essay

Have you ever noticed how some people just stand out from the crowd? Like the clouds in the sky and blades of grass, people are all different. “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker has a good example of an interesting, unique character. Maggie is a young girl who is not only physically but also mentally scarred. The way the burning house, her stuck-up sister, and society affects Maggie makes her different from everyone else.

Maggie Vandermeer dwells in a contemporary society where proficiency in regards to social media is a rather dominant feature, especially in her search for a job and as an attempt to conform. As Maggie is not familiar with such social media’s, especially in comparison to the younger generation, this renders Maggie somewhat of a misfit and continues her path of solitude, as she has no friends or a job. Although Maggie routinely uses her cell phone to text or tweet, she has not yet integrated herself to this contemporary society, as the younger generation is remarkably adept with social media. Moreover, Maggie isn’t conversant with the proper norms that belong to social media. For example, at the beginning of the story, Maggie is woken up by her daughter, Lacey Vandermeer, who sends her a text at 1:27 AM. Next, she begins to Twitter stalk Lacey’s page until she discovers Lacey’s presumed lover named Dane Davis, and begins to stalk him as well. Maggie also seems to prefer face to face interactions, rather than communication with some sort of social media. This preference differentiates her from the younger generation, as they tend to prefer communicating through social media. For example, When Lacey suggests how she does not need to come over, Maggie insists on the value of face to face interaction. “The point was to have a visit with you,” Maggie says (Cullen, 36). When Maggie attends her job interviews, the interviewers, who are of that younger generation, stress the

"Black Wall Street" was the name given to Greenwood Avenue of North Tulsa, Oklahoma during the early 1900’s. Because of strict segregation, Blacks were only allowed to shop, spend, and live in a 35 square block area called the Greenwood district. The "circulation of Black dollars" only in the Black community produced a tremendously prosperous Black business district that was admired and envied by the whole country.

Tenement life was tough in New York City at the turn of the nineteenth century, as portrayed in the historical novel, City of Orphans. This portrayal depicted an immigrant family that was living hand to mouth in a tenement. This depiction is very accurate to the harsh reality that many families had to come to face. It was tough from the conditions, lifestyles, and space. Maks ' family was barely living off their earnings and was susceptible to disease and fraud. The immigrants were easy targets for poverty and sickness, and all too often fell through cracks in the floor. Their lives, as bad as they were, were not as bad as the ones they led in the countries they fled from to escape prosecution and to seek a better life.

How is it possible that two young children from seemingly similar backgrounds could have such opposing futures? Each coming from the poverty of the streets of New York City and yet somehow, one will be successful and the other will commit suicide. This is exactly the case in the novels Ragged Dick, written by Horatio Alger, and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, written by Stephen Crane. Both set in the rough streets of New York City in the mid 1800’s, the novels follow the lives of two poverty-stricken youth, Dick and Maggie. While the two appear similar on the outside, their fates are nothing short of opposites. Upon the reading of each novel, one must ask themselves, what is the American Dream? Is it either of the lives led by these two

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, a novella written in 1893 by Stephen Crane, focuses on a poverty stricken family living in the Bowery district of New York City. This novella is regarded as one of the first works of naturalism in American literature and it helped shape the naturalistic principle that a character is set into a world where there is no escape from one’s biological heredity and the circumstances that the characters find themselves in will dominate their behavior and deprive them of individual responsibility. Throughout the story, the primary goal of the main characters is to escape the lives they lead and to find more comfortable lives away from their current problems, which differs from the romantic ideal that the main characters usually turn inwards to solve their problems.

“[E]nvironment is a tremendous thing in the world, and frequently shapes lives regardless.” (“Although it’s origins…”) Stephen Crane was influenced to write his 1893 novella, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, as a result of his religious family, the secrecy to publish a novel that reveals the reality and impurity of the real world and from the impact of needy, urban landscapes that ended realism and began naturalism.

Sylvia never truly realized how poverty stricken the area she lives in was until she got the opportunity to venture into Manhattan. Sylvia describes the area around the neighborhood she lives in:

These constant beatings in Maggie Johnson’s home, furniture thrown from parent to parent, and every aspect of her family life as being negative, her family situation is not an extremly healthy one. But, despite her hardships, Maggie grows up to become a beautiful young lady whose romantic hopes for a more desirable life remain untarnished.

After the Civil War, realism became a dominant form of writing in the United States, with writers attempting to write about everyday life. After realism came naturalism, a form of writing similar to realism, but with more pessimism. One of the reasons for this pessimism stems from free will and the question of whether people possess it or not. In realism, it is definitely true, while in naturalism it seems less so, but the options are often less than ideal. Because choices do exist for characters, free will is still there, which indicates that naturalism is a derivative form of realism. In Stephen Crane’s “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets,” the characters may have little chance to escape the world they inhabit, like Maggie, Jimmie, and

The genuine appreciation of heritage and family is the focus of Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”. Dee and Maggie’s characters are the vessels that Walker uses to demonstrate the difference between appreciating possessions for their usefulness as well as their personal significance and their contrasting value as a trendy, materialistic connection. There is a palpable difference between Maggie and Dee, both in physical appearance as well as in personality traits and their treatment of the personal artifacts that come into play within the story is very telling of this.

In the very first vignette Esperanza discusses how her family moved around a lot and even though the house on Mango Street was not the house of their dreams, it was a great achievement to own it. Although Esperanza knew they were not moving anytime soon, she recognized one advantage; her family was free of landlord management. In my community home ownership is a constant battle and for many simply a dream. I learn the value of home ownership in a similar sequence as Esperanza. My little sister and I were moved to and from apartment to family member’s houses until our first small home. A home with no back yard and only four stairs and side walk out front. None the

Stephen Crane wrote many short stories, one of which was Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. His stories contained various aspects of Naturalism, a literary movement that sought to replicate a believable everyday reality, as opposed to Romanticism or Surrealism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic, or even supernatural treatment. Poverty, abuse and a survival of the fittest way of life created an environment which Maggie was negatively influenced by. Her environment is made up of many circumstances that affect her, one of which is poverty.

“Maggie” is a story that is pessimistic. It is not only a story of a character who ultimately succumbs to her situation by becoming a prostitute because she feels she has no other way if supporting

In Li’s commune, the housing was not up to today’s standard. They lived in abject poverty. There was barely any available space in the house to accommodate everyone.