Essay on Maggie: A Girl of the Streets: She Never Had a Chance

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.

Mary begins the story as a doting housewife going through her daily routine with her husband. She is content to sit in his company silently until he begins a conversation. Everything is going as usual until he goes “ slowly to get himself another drink” while telling Mary to “sit down” (Dahl 1). This shocks Mary as she is used to getting things for him. After downing his second drink, her husband coldly informs her that he is leaving her and the child. This brutal news prompts the first change in Mary, from loving wife to emotionless and detached from everything.

Maggie and her father never got along since the accident, and forgiving him takes every ounce of strength that she has. In order to rejoin her father in his life, she has to make the most of what he has left, as he is dying of cancer. She takes a short leave from her job to take care of him as he fades away. This fading resembles past regrets and struggles leaving both Maggie and her father’s thoughts. And though they are leaving each other once again, it is as if their bond is only getting stronger. As he passed, Maggie’s nursing and care symbolizes “I forgive you.” This knot being tied closes the window to her past, and opens her to what she and her father wanted her to accomplish, through love and loss. The ending is a metaphor of a split road, and the choice of which road to take is none other than your own, and you are responsible for the

When Mary visits Twlya on Easter, the clothing that she has on is seen as inappropriate for chapel, the fact that she did not catch on to Roberta’s mother not wanting to shake her hand, and also the fact that she did not bring her daughter lunch, provide very clear examples of the failures Twyla sees within her mother. Using words like “simple-minded,” “twitched,” and “groaned,” before admitting that, she “could have killed her”(page 242). Twlya effectively links the failures she sees in her mother with Maggie’s disability. Viewing Maggie’s impairments as the physical representation of Mary’s undesirable traits gives the audience an explanation for why Twlya initially reacted negatively toward Maggie, whose physical shortcomings remind Twlya of the shortcomings she sees within her own mother. Taunting Maggie as a child was Twyla seeking vengeance upon Mary. She was only paying attention to Maggie’s physical traits, while her allowing her actual personality to go

Trying to make ends meet, he turns to selling drugs. By the time Jimmy finds love ones more and decides to settle down tragedy occurs. Trying to escaping from a drug bust at a friend’s house his attempts end up with a conviction for murder. Due to his illiteracy, Jimmy couldn’t read the false accusations he never committed.

In the poem “Half-Hanged Mary” and in The Crucible women have very specific gender roles set, especially as a woman, they must carry forward after each fall. Mary is an outcast in her hometown in Massachusetts. No one agreed with the way she carried herself independently without

In the story “Recitatif” by Tone Morrison, it is about two women who have an issue of remembering what happened to a lady, Maggie, who had an accident when they are children. They go to the same state home, “St. Bonny’s” (201), when they are eight. Their mothers could not take care of them because Twyla’s “mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick” (201). Twyla, who tells the story, has not seen her friend since childhood, suggesting she does not know Roberta like she think she does. Roberta is a confused woman who has not gotten over what happened to Maggie and her mind is creating false memories of the incident.

Jimmy had been troubled throughout his life especially during his childhood. His parents didn’t love him; his teachers didn’t think much of him, and the girl of his dreams was involved in child porn. At one part of the novel Jimmy asked his mother if he could get a cat and she replied, “No, Jimmy, you cannot have a cat. We’ve been over this before. Cats might carry diseases that would be bad for the pigoons.” Jimmy did not seem to get the love that he should from his parents but seemed to get through it. Atwood never really explained what the importance was to Oryx being in child pornography and wonder why that was even put in the novel. Problems continue for Jimmy even until the end of the story where he fights to survive when he believes that he is the only one left. It seemed that Jimmy wasn’t as good as Crake and couldn’t live up to Crake’s expectations as he went to a mediocre school and Crake went to a prestigious school.

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.

Finally, the reader is introduced to the character around whom the story is centered, the accursed murderess, Mrs. Wright. She is depicted to be a person of great life and vitality in her younger years, yet her life as Mrs. Wright is portrayed as one of grim sameness, maintaining a humorless daily grind, devoid of life as one regards it in a normal social sense. Although it is clear to the reader that Mrs. Wright is indeed the culprit, she is portrayed sympathetically because of that very lack of normalcy in her daily routine. Where she was once a girl of fun and laughter, it is clear that over the years she has been forced into a reclusive shell by a marriage to a man who has been singularly oppressive. It is equally clear that she finally was brought to her personal breaking point, dealing with her situation in a manner that was at once final and yet inconclusive, depending on the outcome of the legal investigation. It is notable that regardless of the outcome, Mrs. Wright had finally realized a state of peace within herself, a state which had been denied her for the duration of her relationship with the deceased.

Maggie, who is self-conscious of her appearance, and will “stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of

Without taking note of how many people make up Maggie or Huck’s, their poorly functioning homes are almost exact when considering their chaotic and unpredictable nature. With a mother like Mary and a father like hers, it can hardly be surprising, the novel implies, Maggie grow up as they do. Nonetheless, Maggie and Huck are seldom aware of what mood the drunk/abusive parent might be in.

Crane’s “Maggie: A Girl in the Streets” is a story of unyielding realism. The story follows Maggie, a girl who resides within the Bowery with her physically and emotionally abusive parents and brothers, Jimmy and Tommie. The story focuses on the life and struggles of Maggie and her family within the slums. Maggie desperately tries to escape the life within the Bowery, but eventually succumbs to it and passes away a broken woman.

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.