I Stand Here Ironing, By Tillie Olsen And Everyday Use By...

The two short stories, â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing† by Tillie Olsen and â€Å"Everyday Use† by Alice Walker shows two mothers being concerned about one of their daughter and question how their daughters have turned out to be. The authors show this by using multiple symbols to convey the families’ relationship. By this, the authors use the iron, quilt, and clock all to connect how each symbol shows a significant meaning in the family. In â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing,† Olsen conveys the symbolic meaning of an iron, which connects to Walker’s symbolism for the quilt in â€Å"Everyday Use.† Both these objects are ironically associated with a mother in general. Furthermore, in these short stories, Olsen represents the iron as a mother’s ability to smooth out the wrinkles in her daughter’s life. By this, the mother states, â€Å"I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron†. In other words, she throws all her painful emotions and guilty of not being a mother to her daughter Emily into the iron. In addition, the iron tries to destroy these emotions that are a representation as â€Å"wrinkles†. Also, as the narrator is ironing back and forth, the action is used as a flashback as where she went wrong in raising Emily. Similarly, Walker shows how ironically a quilt is like a mother, in where both share a legacy and are also used fo r comfort. In this short story, a mother tries to reconnect with her daughter through their heritage, but later realizes that she cannot giveShow MoreRelatedEveryday Use By Alice Walker And I Stand Here Ironing Essay1448 Words   |  6 Pagescompared for this essay will be Everyday Use by Alice Walker and I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen. These two stories both share similar themes about motherhood and its difficulties especially in fairness between siblings. The two main daughters in both of these stories come off as feeling inadequate in comparison to their other siblings. The mothers in both the stories are trying so hard to make them feel deserving of happiness in life. The story Everyday Use is narrated in first and secondRead MoreI Stand Here Ironing By Tillie Olsen Essay2308 Words   |  10 Pagesour everyday lives. Each family has their own hopes dreams, and desires for each individual. Every family member, adults and children, should be given the best chance to reach their fullest potential in life. Every family is different and for some families in order for the individual to succeed that means that they must send their children to live with people who can better care for them and provide them with things that they as parents are not able to. In Tillie Olsen’s short story, â€Å"I Stand HereRead MoreHistory of the Development of the Short Story.3660 Words   |  15 Pagesthis story sold 5,300,000 copies in only two days. Cultural and social identity played a considerable role in much of the short fiction of the 1960s. Phillip Roth and Grace Paley cultivated distinctive Jewish-American voices. Tillie Olsen’s â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing† adopted a consciously feminists perspective. James Baldwin’s â€Å"Going to Meet the Man† told stories of African-American life. Frank O’Connor’s â€Å"The Lonely Voice,† a classic exploration of the short story, appeared in 1963. The 1970s