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The Optimist's Daughter Figurative Language

Decent Essays

Making Peace with the Past
Death is a natural process that creeps into everyone’s lives at one point. Ready or not, the process of losing a loved one is an oppressive sense of despair. Grief is a natural response to the loss of a loved one. It is numbing and can take a vast toll on a person. How someone “formulates or represents the past shapes their understanding and views of the present” (House). The process of grief in Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter is displayed by characterization, figurative language, symbolism, and flashback.
For instance, everyone copes with grief differently and at their own pace. Many react to death by becoming depressed, angry, engaging in reckless compulsive behavior, or living in denial. These natural reactions …show more content…

Laurel remembered the breadboard as a clean, beautiful carved board that was very well kept. She was livid when she found Fay cracking nuts on it with a hammer. The beautiful board was now dull, full of splinters, and used to extinguish cigarettes. Enraged, Laurel was tempted to strike Fay on the head with the board but then “realized that the breadboard was a visible sign of the past and does not contain the memory” (Phillips). She was so focused on the physical object rather than the memory behind the breadboard. Laurel realizes that a memory is not “lived in initial possession but in the freed hands, pardoned and freed, and in the heart that can empty but fill again” (Welty 179).
By the same token, the West Virginia Mountains are a symbol of strength. As a child, Laurel’s mother, Becky, lived in Virginia with her family. Laurel’s mother never felt more alive than when she was on those mountains. She obtained a sense of resilience up there. After marrying Clinton, they settled in Mount Salus, Mississippi. The mountains helped her endure her illness with great fortitude, hence why she wanted to return to West Virginia when she was on her death bed. The thought and imagination of the mountains encouraged her to keep

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