The Century Quilt Poem Summary

Remembering memories is preferred, rather than living in reality. In the poem, we witness a woman remembering her high school idol, and she decides in the end to not go and talk to him. It is evident that the woman in the poem prefers her memory rather than the view that reality is showing her, this is shown when the woman refuses to go and meet the “hero she had as a girl”, despite giving herself a realistic reason why she should go and greet him, “you think how easy it would be to walk right over and tap him on the shoulder[, and] say hello” but she doesn’t. She doesn’t go and greet him because her memory remembers him as someone amazing, and admirable, “taller than the boys in your own class[,] taller even than your brothers”; where height is a reflection of her admiration. But her hero is now “fat and balding”, and to go greet him now would warp her perspective of her hero, from someone to idolise, to someone pathetic. In the end, she chooses to just remember him just the way she wants to, rather than remembering him the way reality does, showing that memories are preferred over reality. The woman also chooses not to talk to him because of her personal desire to retain her views and opinions of not only how she sees her hero, but also how

This stanzas opening “Now I’ve found a quilt I’d like to die under” is a small change in tone but it is not minor in scope. The slight change from a calm nostalgia to more exited nostalgia is very important resulting in a change of diction. The narrator begins to describe the quilt with phrases that contain allusions to her past like “the yellowbrown of Mama’s cheeks”. The change of tones impetus fuels these allusions which attribute to the complex meaning of the century quilt that family is the blanket of life which keeps one safe through the darkness(night). The immense amount of illusions continue on into the third stanza strengthening the complex meaning. Whilst being the longest paragraph the third paragraph is also a hive of hidden meanings with allusions to the future and of what’s to come of the quilt. The most essential part of this paragraph is the use of the word “dreams” and

In the first lines of the poem Yeats describes this woman as “old and grey and full of sleep” (Yeats). The speaker of the poem addresses his beloved saying that when she is aged she should read a particular book which will remind her of her youth. She will remember the

The poem takes place within the mind of the former boy, reflecting on his time among

Another piece of the literature that has similar attributes to the is the poem “My Mother Pieced Quilts.” The poem uses a mother’s handmade quilt to access and explore the poet’s childhood memories. Like how a quilt is made, the poem pieces together memories in order to show the reader a complete image between the speaker’s childhood and the mother’s strong influence. The speaker shows how her mother’s influential ways shaped into the person the speaker is today. For example, “But it was just that every morning I awoke to these October ripened canvases passed my hand across their cloth faces and began to wonder how you pieced all these together.” This quote shows the interest that the speaker has towards her mother’s quilt, she then explains in great detail how her mother threads pieces of fabrics together, obviously admiring her mother’s works. This reason shows how a person’s identity is influenced by his or her environment.

An obvious symbol in this poem is the individual squares of the quilt. Waniek describes the individual squares and later parallels the squares to the speaker’s family members and leaves later in the poem. The color of each square, “brown… white… and… yellow brown,” (ln 15-17) are compared in the final stanza to the color of her family’s skin- her “father’s burnt umber” and her “mother’s ochre” match the brown and yellow brown squares (ln 39-40). The white squares account for her “grandfather’s white family” (ln 26). The detail about her grandfather is especially important to note because prior to her grandfather’s family, the speaker notes her Meema’s “yellow sisters” (ln 25). With consideration to the time period her grandparent’s would have lived in, one can infer there would be some racial hostility, or at best, some tensions. Racial diversity is also apparent in the detail that the speaker’s father has brown skin and the mother has yellow. The speaker notes this rich diversity prior to discussing her future children. The concluding lines, “I’d call it The Century Quilt, / after its pattern of leaves” can be interpreted in that the speaker is talking about her diversity, and the diversity of her children, from their shared ancestry. The squares for her family in her quilt show the impact that her complex heritage has on the speaker, and how her ancestry is important to

What Dee failed to realize was that the quilts she wanted were in fact a part of their family’s heritage. Each quilt was made with with parts of clothing from different family members and sown together to show their importance in the family and also for remembrance of who they all

When Maggie corrects her sister Dee on their family, Dee brushes it off by pointing out, "'Maggie's brain is like an elephant's'" (63). This emphasizes that Dee did not really know about her family. This shows the reader that Dee's new persona is completely made up. When Dee is trying to prove her point that the quilts are valuable, she argues, "'She did all this stitching by hand'" (64). This imagery illustrates how important the quilt is to the family because of all of the hard work put into it, and it also shows the reader how Dee just wants to own the quilt for her own fake value that she sees in them.

The uses of both nostalgic and sincere tones help the speaker convey how important the quilt really is. The speaker describes how she and her sister “were in love / with (their) Meema’s Indian blanket” (1-2) and how vividly she remembers how they “used to wrap (themselves) / at play in its folds and be chieftains / and princesses” (10-12). These fond memories help to intensify the love the speaker and her sister had for the quilt. The sincere tone comes to light when the speaker considers the future and anticipates that she will have “good dreams / for a hundred years under this quilt” (21-22) just as she did under her Meema’s blanket and when she hopes that “under this quilt” (34) “within the dream of myself / perhaps I’d meet my son / or my other child, as yet unconceived” (41-43). By hoping in the future, the quilt will comfort and bring joy to future generations the speaker once again symbolizes the quilt as being a part of her own family.

The stanza lengths also suggest the relationship between the beloved fabrics and time, experience, and imagination. Waniek divides her poem into three stanzas of varying lengths, each stanza focusing on particular points in the speaker’s experience. Set in the past, the twelve line first stanza finds the speaker reflecting on her childhood and her experiential connection to blankets in the possession of both her “Meema” and her “Daddy.” The eight line second stanza touches briefly on the present, and the speaker’s acquisition of a quilt so beloved she’d “like to die under [it].” Longer than the first two stanzas combined, the twenty-five line final stanza finds the speaker blending past, present, and future. She imagines a future where the quilt “caress[es]” her, prompting her to visualize having “good dreams/for a hundred years.” This reverie leads immediately into the speaker contemplating a past where her grandmother, “under her [own] blanket” has dreams of a yet-to-be-bom daughter. Time and imagination shift yet again, with the speaker’s reflection on her “childhood of miracles” followed by final imaginings of her own “as yet unconceived”

Marylin Nelson, a poet and children’s book author, wrote her poem “The Century Quilt” in the twentieth century for a quilter named Sarah Mary Taylor. For Nelson, her life was influenced based on a family member’s item. Nelson expresses through the poem the impact that her Meema’s quilt had on her life through theme, symbolism, and vivid imagery.

Within the poem “The Century Quilt” created by Marilyn Nelson Waniek, she describes a girl a quilt that reminds her of family. The author uses a literary technique that helps the readers find out the complex meanings she had towards the blanket. Firstly, a technique the author used with structure helped the character described in the poem tells the readers about the special blanket. The author picks her words very carefully using only kind descriptions, such as being in love and having good dreams, to give the audience a relaxing feeling as they read the poem.

In Marilyn Nelson Waniek’s The Century Quilt a strong sense of structure, tone, and imagery is employed to develop complex meanings that the speaker wants to convey to her audience. By organizing each stanza chronologically, using a nostalgic tone, and allowing for imagery to represent more than what is written, Waniek successfully creates a theme- family is a source of comfort and endures the course of life.

Waniek makes extensive use of imagery throughout the poem as the speaker connects their childhood to the lives of the rest of her family. Her grandmother, Meema, would bring an Indian blanket

h2.1). In this stanza it paints a portrait of her going back in time to try and recollect what love was about with her husband and was it silent or restless.