Maggie's Short Story

The mother, who is a hard worker, likes to keep the house clean and lives in a simple farming life. She seems not good at anything other than works like a man. She is poor, but she is easy to entertain by simple things. She is proud of what she is doing. She cleans the yard, but she thinks “it is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room” (1). She does not care how she looks, she even describes her body shape that “keep [her] hot in zero weather” (1) with a sense of humor. She is too busy to care about her appearance, or maybe she does not even care how she looks. Her dedication of work and satisfaction of life actually carries on her family’s traditions. She grows in a poor family. Her family turns the old clothes into a quilt instead …show more content…
In her mother’s perspective, she is a shy, low self-esteem daughter, but she remembers her tradition. Her mother always shows great sympathy for her throughout the whole short story; She sees her as “a lame animal” (1) after the fire. As she also realizes Maggie is “ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs” (1), and she “is not bright” (2). That’s why Maggie thinks she does not deserve a better good-looking guy, and determine to marry ugly John Thomas. The way of her thinking is conservative and old fashioned. She has the same view of tradition as her mother because she is uneducated and lives with her mother. She honors her ancestors just like her mother. When Dee takes away the quilts, she does not fight back, because she thinks she will “never [win] anything, or [have] anything reserved for her” (6). Plus, even she does not have the quilts, she still has the memories of her ancestors, because she “can ‘member Grandma Dee without the quilts” (6). She knows how to …show more content…
As her sister thinks she “has held life always in the palm of one hand” (1), she also believes she has the ability to determine in her family. She not only changes her name into Wangero, but also takes away the dasher and the hand-made quilts. Even her mother insists giving the quilts to Maggie “when she marries John Thomas” (5). She believes the quilt are “priceless” (6), they should be hung on the wall for decoration instead of Maggie “can’t appreciate these quilts!” (5), and “put them to everyday use”(5). She thinks Maggie is using the priceless quilts in a wrong way, but she hangs them on the wall seems “that was the only thing [she] could do with quilts” (6). She totally did not understand her heritage of the quilts, which are made of “bits and pieces” shirts from her ancestors’ “everyday