lesson 7 everyday use for your grandmama alice walker 本单元作者：颜静兰陈彦会 book 1...

Lesson 7

Everyday Use

for your grandmama

Alice Walker

本单元作者：颜静兰陈彦会

Book 1Book 1

外语教学与研究出版社FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING AND RESEARCH PRESS

Contents

Part One: Warm-up

Part Two: Background Information

Part Three: Text Appreciation

Part Four: Language Study

Part Five: Extension

Part One—Warm-up

Ⅰ. Video Watching Ⅱ. Brainstorming Ⅲ. Discussion Ⅳ. Learning Objectives

Ⅰ. Video Watching

Watch the video clip and discuss the following questions.

1. How to preserve our cultural traditions and

heritage in the process of globalization?

2. Is globalization in danger of diluting national

identities and “transnationalizing” cultures?

3. How can societies attempt to manage

globalization and become developed while

maintaining a viable national identity?

4. Do you have stories from your grandparents or

forefathers related to it ?

Ⅰ. Video Watching

1. What do you know about the black culture?

2. What is the situation of the black culture in the

white world?

3. What can you predict about the story by reading

the title?

4. Do you know any novels or stories by any Afro-

American writers? Have you read any?

Ⅱ. Brainstorming

Ⅲ. Discussion

During the age of globalization, everyone is in front

of

contradictions.

1. Facing the traditions and heritage of our

ancestors, what kind of choice should we make?

2. What is the impact of globalization on traditional

Chinese values/black cultures.

Ⅳ. Learning Objectives

1. To comprehend the whole story

2. To lean and master the vocabulary and

expressions

3. To learn to paraphrase the difficult sentences

4. To understand the structure of the text

5. To appreciate the style and rhetoric of the

passage.

Part Two—Background Information

Ⅰ. About the AuthorⅡ. The Black Power Movement Ⅲ. American Blacks and Its CultureⅣ. Johnny CarsonⅤ. American Quilts

Ⅰ. About the Author

Alice Walker

A famous American

black woman novelist, poet

and essayist. She is

regarded as a most forceful

representative of women

literature and black

literature.


• Alice is expert at portraying

people in rural areas and she

often takes her hometown as

the background in her writing.

• She is particularly interested

in examining relationship among

the blacks themselves, and

concerns more about the life

of black women.


• Volumes of poetry:

Once (1968)

Revolutionary Petunias and other Poems (1973)

• Biography:

A Biography of Langston Hughes (1973)

• Collections of short stories:

Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women

(1973)

• Novels:

The third Life of Grange Copeland (1970)

Meridian (1977)

The Temple of My Familiar (1989)

The Color Purple (1982)

By the Father’s Smile (1998)



• Of all the works, The Color Purple is her best one

which won all the three major book awards in

America—the Pulitzer, the National Book Award and

the National Book Critics Circle Award.

• The novel was an instant bestseller

and made into an equally successful

movie in 1985.

Ⅱ. The Black Power Movement

• Black Power, a political movement that arose in the

middle 1960s, strove to express a new racial

consciousness among Blacks in the United States.

• One main point of the Black Power Concept was the

necessity for Black people to define the world in

their own terms. At times this included a call for

revolutionary political struggle to reject racism and

imperialism in the United States.

• Through the early 1800s, black Arkansans helped

shape the pioneer culture.

• Although they were slaves during this time, many

escaped the hard labor of the fields and through

their talents and skills became craftsmen,

creating frontier furniture, cast iron skillets, plows

and locks.

Ⅲ.American Blacks and Its Culture

• Strong group ties, extended families and religion

were extremely important. This created unity and

was the basis of the cultural enrichment that

African-Americans still treasure today.


• Religion:

They believe in mostly African religions and they

worship their own God and establish their own

community churches.


• Literature:

Many great Afro-American writers are worth mentioning,

especially those during the Harlem Renaissances:

Langston Hughes’s Poetry, Richard Wright’s Native Son,

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It

on the Mountain. Some contemporary woman writers like

the Nobel Prize winner (1993) Toni Morrison (The bluest

Eye, Song of Solomon), Beloved and Alice Walker (The

Color Purple).


• Art and Music:

Blues — it depicted mostly sad feelings reflecting the

difficult lives of American blacks. It is usually played

and sung by black musicians, but it is popular with all

Americans now.

• Politics:

Some well-known figures in American history: Martin

Luther King, Rice and Powell, etc.


• host of NBC’s “The Tonight

Show” for nearly 30 years,

died Sunday of emphysema.

• “He passed away this

morning,” Carson’s nephew,

Jeffrey Sotzing, told CNN.

Ⅳ. Johnny Carson

Carson was host of the late-

night talk show from October

1, 1962, to May 22, 1992,

taking over from Jack Paar and

handing off to Jay Leno after

4,531 episodes.

Ⅳ. Johnny Carson

Ⅴ. American quilts

Symbolic meaning of the quilts:

• The quilts that Wangero

covets link her generation to

prior generations, and thus

they represent the larger

African American past.

• The quilts contain scraps of

dresses worn by the

grandmother and even the

great-grandmother, as well as

a piece of the uniform worn

by the great-grandfather who

served in the Union Army in

the War between the states.

Ⅴ. American quilts

Part Three—Text Appreciation

Ⅰ. Text Analysis →Introduction →Theme →Text Organization →Further Understanding Ⅱ. Writing Devices →Language Style →Rhetorical Devices Ⅲ. Sentence Paraphrase

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

Introduction

• “Everyday Use” is a short story. It focuses on the

relationship among black people. It is one of the

best-written short stories by Alice Walker.

• The main elements of a short story include: plot,

characters, point of view, setting, climax, theme

and the methods to develop the theme.

1. Plot

Dee’s coming back to fetch Grandma’s everyday

use

(especially the old quilts) and her changed attitude

toward them.

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

2. Characters

1) Dee — a round character 叛逆者• fashionable, rebellious, strong-minded and ill-

tempered, a sense of vanity

• a symbol of the modern black women

• superficial love of black tradition

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

2) Maggie — a flat character 继承者• docile, timid, shy, good-tempered, kind-hearted

and unselfish, a strong sense of inferiority

• inherence of black culture, genuine love of black

tradition

• a symbol of the traditional black weak women

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

3) “I” — a flat character 捍卫者 • uneducated but sensible

• physically strong but spiritually weak, a sense of

inferiority

• cherish “grandma’s everyday use”

• a symbol of the black working women: the

majority of black women

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

4) Asalamalakim — a flat character

• a black Muslim boy

• a symbol of another kind of African culture

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

3. Point of view

The first-person narrator

4. Setting

Place — “my courtyard”; Time — in the middle of 1960s

5. Climax

Dee wanted to take away the old quilts but “I” took

them

back and gave them to Maggie.

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

6. Theme

How to deal with the black traditional culture

7. Methods

flashback, foreshadowing, contrast

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

• How to deal with the black traditional culture.

• The story addresses itself to the dilemma of

African Americans who, in striving to escape

prejudice and poverty, risk a terrible deracination,

a sundering from all that has sustained and

defined them.

Theme

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

Text Organization• Part 1 (Paras. 1-2):

The first paragraph describes the place where the story takes

place, and the second paragraph introduces the narrator’s

two daughters. So in the first two paragraphs we have met all

the three main characters. The narrator, Mama, makes a

contrast between the two sisters: one is nervous, homely and

ashamed of her burn scars and the other one has a firm

control of her life and can always get what she wants.

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

• Part 2 (Paras. 3-16):

This section is what we call exposition, providing

background and preparing for the main action, which

is what happens during Dee’s visit. Mama provides

background information about the family members by

calling back the past. Mama describes to us what kind

of person she is: less educated, large working woman

and further reveals to us the differences between the

two daughters.

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

• Part 3 (Paras. 17-81):

This section describes the visit of Dee and her

boyfriend. Around the issue of changing names a

conflict is being developed as part of the rising

action.

The story reaches its climax when Dee tries every

possible way to get hold of the quilts but is refused

flatly by Mama.

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

Further Understanding

1. What is the significance of the title in relation to

the central conflict of the story?

2. Describe Maggie’s personality and her feelings

toward her sister Dee. How does she deal with

Dee’s demand for the quilts, and why?

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

3. Discuss some of the positive and negative

aspects of Dee’s character, focusing in

particular on her relationship with her family.

What is implied about Dee in the passage

describing the loss of their previous home?

4. Is there anything ironic about Dee’s

accusations that her mother and sister do not

understand their heritage?

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

5. Describe the narrator’s personality and her

feelings about her daughter Dee. In what sense

is this “her” story?

6. In the end, where does Alice Walker seem to

stand on the issues she raises regarding the

characters’ sense of their heritage?

Ⅰ. Text Analysis

Ⅱ. Writing Devices

Language Style

1. Using many elliptical and short, simple sentences to

achieve certain effect

e.g. “When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and

the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular

grooves.” Before the word “lined”, the link verb “is” is

omitted.

3. Using languages which suit the background of

characters

e.g. “The church and me” is incorrect grammar,

and it

should be “the church and I”.


Rhetorical Devices: Hyperbole

Definition: An extravagant statement. Deliberate use of

overstatement or exaggeration to achieve emphasis.

e.g.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been to Vietnam, Iraq, and

Afghanistan, and I can say that this is a million times

worse than all of them put together.’’


Rhetorical Devices:

Understatement

Definition: A figure of speech in which a writer or a

speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less

important or serious than it is. It achieves its effect of

emphasizing a fact by deliberately understating it,

impressing the listener or the reader more by what is

merely implied or left unsaid than by bare statement.


e.g.

“A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be

conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty.”

(Mark Twain)


Ⅲ. Sentence Paraphrase

1. In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with

rough, man-working hands. (Para. 5)

The phrase “in real life” is transitional, linking this

paragraph and the one above, implying that those TV

programs are nothing but make-believe and the

narrator

is very skeptical of them. In reality she has the typical

features of a black working woman.


2. ...with one foot raised in flight, with my

head...from them. (Para. 6)

I’m ready to leave as quickly as possible because of

discomfort, nervousness, timidity, etc., and turn my

head away from them in order to avoid them as

much as

possible for the same reason.

3. She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground...to

the ground. (Para. 9)

Maggie has been very shy ever since the fire destroyed

the other house. The narrator hints that Maggie got her

burn scars in the fire. She is so shy that she never raises

her head or eyes when looking at and talking to people,

and she is always so nervous and restless that she is

unable to stand still. “Chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet

in shuffle” are three nominative absolute constructions.


4. Her eyes seemed stretched open, blazed open by

the flames reflected in them. (Para. 10)

Her eyes are wide open to the fullest extent with

fear

and one can see flames reflected in her eyes.


5. She used to read to us without pity,

forcing...underneath her voice. (Para. 11)

The narrator implies that the books Dee read to

them

were written by white people and full of their

language

and ideas, falsehoods and their way of life.


6. Her eyelids would not flicker for minutes at a

time. (Para. 12)

Again it shows that Dee was undaunted, with a

strong

character. She would look at anybody steadily and

intently for a long time.


7. ...and kisses me on the forehead. (Para. 22)

It is not usual for a daughter to kiss her mother on the

forehead. Normally, people kiss each other on the

cheeks for greeting. This shows Dee is very distant to

her family. Also note she takes all the photos first

before she kisses her. A loving daughter will run up to

her mother and throw her arms round her.


8. Everything delighted her. (Para. 45)

Soon we’ll learn that Dee/Wangero had a new interest

in the old objects in the house such as the benches her

daddy made when they were too poor to buy chairs,

Grandma Dee’s butter dish, the churn Uncle Buddy

whittled out of a tree, the dasher, etc.


The narrator expects the readers to contrast her

new

interest with her old hatred of the house. This

indicates a change of values. Black cultural

nationalists

advocated for “Black Power” and that “Black is

beautiful” in the 1960s, and obviously this deeply

influenced Dee/Wangero’s values.


9. She held the quilts securely in her arms, stroking them.

(Para. 61)

In Para. 63, she was “clutching them closely to her

bosom”. All this shows how much she wanted them and

how determined she was to have them. Later we will

learn that the mother had once offered Dee one of the

quilts when she went away to college. At that time Dee

thought the quilts were old-fashioned. Note the change

in Dee/Wangero’s attitudes toward the quilts.


10. “Your heritage...” (Para. 80)

“Heritage” is a key word. Dee/Wangero understood that

old quilts represented heritage but her interpretation

of it was superficial as she only saw it as a thing for

showing off. Unlike Maggie who was deeply involved in

carrying on the heritage, Dee/Wangero was actually

detached from her cultural roots, only appreciating

them from a distance.


Part Four—Language Study

Ⅰ. Word Study Ⅱ. Phrases and Expressions

Ⅰ. Word Study

1. totter

2. tacky

3. shuffle

4. flicker

5. scalding

6. recompose

7. wriggle

8. peek

9. nibble

10. whittle

11. rifle

12. scrape

13. snuff

14. hangdog

15. stump

1. totter

(v.): to be unsteady on one’s feet; to stagger

e.g. The drunkard tottered along the road.

2. tacky

(adj.): untidy; neglected; unrefined; vulgar

e.g. They spread a lot of tacky gossip about his love

life.

Ⅰ. Word Study

3. shuffle

(v.): to walk slowly and in a dragging way

e.g. The old lady shuffled across the room.

4. flicker

(v.): to move with a quick, light, wavering motion

e.g. An airy and innocent playfulness seemed to flicker

like the shadow of summer leaves over her children

face, and around her buoyant figure.

Ⅰ. Word Study

5. scalding

(adj.): fierce in attacking in words

e.g. May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding,

heartwrung tears as poured from mine.

6. recompose

(v.): to restore to composure

e.g. Pietersen needed to recompose himself, but

instead

he played the worst shot of the day and paid the price.

Ⅰ. Word Study

7. wriggle

(v.): to twist from side to side, either in one place or

when moving along

e.g. Children wriggle themselves when they are bored.

8. peek

(v.): to glance or look quickly and furtively, esp. through

an opening or from behind something

e.g. He just had time to peek into the room before the

door closed.

Ⅰ. Word Study

9. nibble

(v.): to take small bites (out of sth.); to eat (sth.)

with

small bites

e.g. She never had much for breakfast. She would

drink a cup of coffee and nibble at a piece of

bread.

Ⅰ. Word Study

10. whittle

(v.): to cut (wood) into a smaller size by taking off small

thin pieces

e.g. Your article is too long, try to whittle it away to

half its length.

11. rifle

(v.): to ransack and rob (a place, building, etc.); to

pillage; to plunder

e.g. He rifled through my drawers to find matching

socks.

Ⅰ. Word Study

12. scrape

(n.): a small piece; bit; fragment; shred

e.g. He fell off the bike and got a scrape on his

knee.

13. snuff

(n.): smell; scent

e.g. Greedy heir wait for the old man to snuff out.

Ⅰ. Word Study

14. hangdog

(adj.): ashamed and cringing

e.g. I wanted to tell him off, but he had such a

hangdog

air I just couldn’t do it.

15. stump

(v.): (colloquial) to puzzle; to baffle

e.g. He stumped the teacher with a question.

Ⅰ. Word Study

Ⅱ. Phrases and Expressions

1. crop up

2. sidle up

3. stand off

4. stare down

5. hang about

6. blue streak


1. crop up:

to appear unexpectedly or occasionally

e.g. All sorts of difficulties have cropped up at work ．

2. sidle up:

to move up sideways, esp. in a shy or stealthy manner

e.g. A man sidled up to me and asked if I wanted a

ticket for the match.


3. stand off:

to stand away in a distance

e.g. He tried to stand off his creditors.

4. stare down:

to stare back at another until the gaze of the one

stared at is turned away

e.g. Small children like to stare each other down

sometimes.


5. hang about:

(colloquial) to loiter or linger around

e.g. He did not like to hang about all day doing nothing.

6. blue streak:

(colloquial) anything regarded like a streak of

lightning in speed, vividness, etc.

e.g. Mrs. White always talks a blue streak.

Part Five—Extension

Ⅰ. Useful expressions Ⅱ. Discussion Ⅲ. Quiz Ⅳ. Writing

Ⅰ. Useful Expressions

日用家当既羡慕又敬畏的心情领进伶牙俐齿紧张不安，准备随时溜走穿着一件粉红色的裙子

everyday use

a mixture of envy and awe

usher into

quick and witty tongue

with one foot raised in flight

be enveloped in pink shirt

Ⅰ. Useful Expressions

想要什么便能得到什么hold life always in the palm of one hand

灌输一大堆编造出来的事物 wash sb. in a river of make-believe

Ⅱ. Discussion

1. Discuss the central theme of the story.

2. What’s the symbolic meaning of the quilts?

3. Compare and analyze the three woman

characters.

4. Comment on the images of animals in the story.

Ⅱ. Discussion

5. Comment on some of the characteristics of

mother’s use of language in terms of choice of

words, sentence structure and grammar.

6. What is the mother’s feeling toward Dee? How is

it changed in the course of the story?

Ⅲ. Quiz

Ⅳ. Writing

Write an essay titled My views on Chinese traditional

heritage with 300 words in English.

Marks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropriateness.

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lesson 7 everyday use for your grandmama alice walker 本单元作者：颜静兰 陈彦会 book 1...

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lesson 7 everyday use for your grandmama alice walker 本单元作者：颜静兰陈彦会 book 1...