Passage Analyses

Passage 1: Alice Walker's "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens" : The Poetry Within the Prose

Passage:

(1) When the poet Jean Toomer walked through the South in the early twenties, he discovered a curious thing: black women whose spirituality was so intense, so deep, so unconscious, they were themselves unaware of the richness they held. (2) They stumbled blindly through their lives: creatures so abused and mutilated in body, so dimmed and confused by pain, that they considered themselves unworthy even of hope. (3) In the selfless abstractions their bodies became to the men who used them, they became more than "sexual objects," more even than mere women: They became "Saints." (4) Instead of being perceived as whole persons, their bodies became shrines: What was thought to be their minds became temples suitable for worship. (5) These crazy Saints stared out at the world, wildly, like lunatics--- or quietly, like suicides; and the "God" that was in their gaze was a mute as a great stone.

Analysis:

Alice Walker is a natural born poet, and even when she writes prose, the composition is still beautifully poetic. She uses repetition of words which is a big poetic element. For example in sentence one she writes, “…whose spirituality was so intense, so deep, so unconscious…” this repetition, along with polysyndeton, of the word ‘so’ gives the sentence its own melody. She does this again further in the paragraph with the phrase, “They became.” The repetition of “They became” also makes the reader ponder on those words for a longer time. I believe that they are significant because these woman are ‘becoming’ these different things against their own will. Men bend them to their own will, highlighting the theme of women being turned into objects. The poetic nature of this passage is also significant overall because Walker articulates the problem that African-American women face in not being able to express their creativity. The rhythm and beautifully crafted sentences in this passage and the entire essay allow her to express that creativity that so many women were not able to cultivate themselves.

You can also find other areas balance throughout this passage and specifically the scheme of parallelism. This can be clearly seen in sentences 3 and 4: “Instead of this they became that,” “What ought to be this became that.” Both sides of the comma in both of these sentences are emphasized with equal weight and the resulting effect is tension. Each clause after the colon could be its own sentence, but when she puts the full sentences together and separates them by a colon, they hold equal weight, and as a result, tension is created. There is tension between what these women should be honored for (their minds and their humanity) and what they are actually worshiped for, (their bodies); they are, as a result, dehumanized.

Walker’s writing style also uses capitalization in interesting ways. She capitalizes the word “Saint” I think this is a stylistic choice to emphasize the word. I believe that she wants this word to stand out because although she is saying the women are being called saints, she wants to make it clear that this is not in a good way. The women are being worshipped as material objects. As noted, Walker’s style consists of using quite a few colons in this passage. Walker uses these colons to create appositives. The words after the colons all “substitute” for the women she is describing: “creatures…Saints…sexual objects…shrines” etc. She is saying that the world has made the women all of these things. Yet, as the essay goes on to state, they are above all anonymous. They have lost their identities. Walker does not give us any names in the paragraph, nor does she give her mother’s name in rest of the essay even though she is the subject at the end. She leaves them anonymous. This resonates with the reader; and instills the emotion of anger of how Africa-American women were and still are pushed down.

Walker uses this religious vocab through the passage, “worshipped,” “shrines,” “Saints,” “‘God’”. The way that she uses the religious vocab is not in a way of respect and honor. It is used in a cynical way. In sentence five, we can see this when she uses the almost oxymoron “crazy Saints.” Also, when she says, their “bodies became shrines,” we can tell that is not something that is good for these women because at the beginning of that sentence she says, “Instead of being perceived as whole persons…” So, their bodies becoming temples has further dehumanized them. This derisive attitude toward religion and God, it most prominently seen in the simile in the last sentence, “…the ‘God’ that was in their gaze was as mute as a great stone.” I think that this silent God has to do with the way that we perceive God as a male deity. She already established that men treat women as material objects, so it would make sense that God, as a male, would not intervene to stop it; he would sit back and let it happen. This image of God as silent as a stone and unmoving makes the statement more powerful.

Analysis 2: