Innocent Mentality In Alice Walker's 'To Hell With Dying'
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From the short story the author lets us know that the narrator has an innocent mentality. At a very young age, we as people are told to enjoy our youth and to take in all that the world can offer us before we realize that we are too late to actually enjoy it all. We as obeying young folks listen to our elders, so we frolic and play until the sun sets. In “To hell with dying”, the narrator did exactly that by depicting her days alongside Mr. Sweets. She’s the youngest from the family and was the most playful one as well. Playing with Mr. Sweets was a regular thing with her and them being separate from him was unusual. She would engage in recreational activities such as: wrestling and guitar playing, as mentioned by the narrator in page 2 of the story.…show more content… The narrator explains this by stating, “He had great respect for my mother for she never held his drunkenness against him and would let us play with him even when he was about to fall in the fireplace from drink” (Walker 1). The narrator remained happy and ignorant to how serious the situation in reality was. In particular when Mr. Sweets got drunk, but this didn’t matter because she only looked at the bright side of things, “Mr. Sweets would sometimes lose complete or nearly complete control of his head and neck so that he would loll in his chair, his mind remained strangely acute and his speech not too affected.” (Walker 1). Something as awful as an old man too drunk to hold his own head up high was turned into something joyful, because he was still able to talk through the narrators eyes. She compliments her brother on being generous near the end of page 3, saying how nice of him it was to let her do most of the reviving of Ms. Sweets. Sibling love is being showed here and as well as her humility to show gratitude at such a young age, making her a tender loving