How Does Alice Walker Present The Dynamic Characters In To Hell With Dying

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Change is shown through time. Some won’t notice such changes in their life but others will. Characters of change, such as the narrator in this passage, are known as dynamic characters. Alice Walker in her writing, To Hell With Dying, follows the personal experiences that a young girl has with an alcoholic old man and the many encounters of death he claimed to have throughout her life until his untimely death. This old man, known as Mr. Sweets, gets the motivation he needs by children to keep fighting to live another day. The narrator, a little girl, recoils her experiences with the old man and the influence she had over him. The way the narrator presents the old man, shows the type of character she is to the readers. Dynamic characters are …show more content…

The narrators experiences with Mr. Sweet, when she is young involve her duty and responsibility to rehabilitate Mr. Sweet when ever he is having one of his sudden near death incidents due to his excessive drinking habits. Not only does the girl cooperate with the ritual but states “I held his woolly head in my arms and wished I could have been old enough to have been the woman he loved so much and that I had not been lost years and years ago.” (1131) Due to Mr. Sweet losing his wife the narrator was sweet (no pun intended) enough to take into consideration how much further she would of gone to make Mr. Sweet happy, if she was able to do …show more content…

Sweets might be close but she doesn't realize the influence she has over him until she's matured. Her accepting to take place in this ritual makes her grow as a person. Her change in character appears clear when she arrives at Mr. Sweet’s death bed and realizes that what once worked for Mr. Sweet to sober up will not work any longer. Its important to understand in life that nothing stays the same as much as we would like it to or not. Mr. Sweets guitar is passed on to the girl as a way to remember him by. The guitar brought back memories of Mr. Sweet singing “Sweet Georgia Brown.” In the passage the narrator states “He did not want me to feel that my trip had been for nothing. The old guitar! I plucked the strings, hummed “Sweet Georgia Brown.” The magic of Mr. Sweet lingered still in the cool steel

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