Many Rivers To Cross Analysis

The theme of death is one that pervades literature from all cultures. Death is something that we all must eventually stare in the face. In June Jordan’s “Many Rivers to Cross”, “Man in the Water” by Roger Rosenblatt, and “Beauty When the Other Dancer Is the Self” by Alice Walker, the theme of death is dealt with in some form or another. “Many Rivers to Cross” and “Man in the Water” discuss literal mortality, where people actually die, while “Beauty When the Other Dancer Is the Self” talks about a sort of emotional death. In Alice Walker’s essay, the young and beautiful version of Walker “dies” when she suffers a major injury to her eye, rendering her blind and ugly, at least from her view. In all of these stories, a moral or emotional struggle is directly tied to the deaths, showing us the authors’ views on human nature, whether it is about accepting oneself, sacrifice, or women’s rights. In “Many Rivers to Cross,” June Jordan’s mother commits suicide. The central image of this essay is her mother attempting to stand up from her bed after she overdoses, which symbolizes how Jordan’s …show more content…
Walker thinks of herself as the prettiest girl in her family and in her town, until one day her brother accidentally shoots her in the eye, rendering her blind in one eye. This changes Walker; she no longer believes that she is the prettiest, and it affects other aspects of her life, including her schoolwork. Before she was shot, Walker an innocent little girl, but that person “dies” with the accident. Walker learns a lesson from her “death”, much like what June Jordan learned from her mother’s death and what the world learned from the Man in the Water. When Walker was twenty-seven her small child said, “‘Mommy, there’s a world in your eye….Mommy, where did you get that world in your