Having been rejected by people they love "The Block Party" tells the story of another deferred dream, this one literally dreamt by Mattie the night before the real Block Party. Introduction Her success probably stems from her exploration of the African-American experience, and her desire to " help us celebrate voraciously that which is ours," as she tells Bellinelli in the interview series, In Black and White. Sources As she is thinking this, they hear a scream from Serena, who had stuck a fork in an electrical outlet. "The Women of Brewster Place The Mediterranean families knew him as the man who would quietly do repairs with alcohol on his breath. He complains that he will never be able to get ahead with her and two babies to care for, and although she does not want to do it, she gets an abortion. Etta Mae dreams of a man who can "move her off of Brewster Place for good," but she, too, has her dream deferred each time that a man disappoints her. For example, when Mattie leaves her home after her father beats her, she never again sees her parents. Although the epilogue begins with a meditation on how a street dies and tells us that Brewster Place is waiting to die, waiting is a present participle that never becomes past. Why did Lorraine kill Ben in Brewster? - Stwnews.org The women again pull together, overcoming their outrage over the destruction of one of their own. Praises Naylor's treatment of women and relationships. But I worried about whether or not the problems that were being caused by the men in the women's lives would be interpreted as some bitter statement I had to make about black men. Despite the inclination toward overwriting here, Naylor captures the cathartic and purgative aspects of resistance and aggression. Of these unifying elements, the most notable is the dream motif, for though these women are living a nightmarish existence, they are united by their common dreams. C. C. is a young African-American male who terrorizes his community with drugs and violence. This question contains spoilers (view spoiler) like. In the case of rape, where a violator frequently co-opts not only the victim's physical form but her power of speech, the external manifestations that make up a visual narrative of violence are anything but objective. Teresa, the bolder of the two, doesn't care what the neighbors think of them, and she doesn't understand why Lorraine does care. They will not talk about these dreams; only a few of them will even admit to having them, but every one of them dreams of Lorraine, finally recognizing the bond they share with the woman they had shunned as "different." Joel Hughes, "Naylor Discusses Race Myths and Life," Yale Daily News, March 2, 1995. http://www.cis.yale.edu/ydn/paper. Lorraine's inability to express her own pain forces her to absorb not only the shock of bodily violation but the sudden rupture of her mental and psychological autonomy. Cane, Gaiman, Neil 1960- when she is an adult. She leaves her boarding house room after a rat bites him because she cannot stay "another night in that place without nightmares about things that would creep out of the walls to attack her child." The sun is shining when Mattie gets up: It is as if she has done the work of collective destruction in her dream, and now a sunny party can take place. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Many commentators have noted the same deft touch with the novel's supporting characters; in fact, Hairston also notes, "Other characters are equally well-drawn. Cora Lee began life as a little girl who loved playing with new baby dolls. to start your free trial of SparkNotes Plus. The children gather around the car, and the adults wait to see who will step out of it. He loses control and beats Mattie in an attempt to get her to name the baby's father. Place, abandoned, lives on only in the hopes and memories of the women who once migrants from the southern half of the United States. The final act of violence, the gang rape of Lorraine, underscores men's violent tendencies, emphasizing the differences between the sexes. Why does Lorraine kill Ben in The Women of Brewster Place? - eNotes He lives with this pain until Lorraine mistakenly kills him in her pain and confusion after being raped. Naylor gives Brewster Place human characteristics, using a literary technique known as personification. She also encourages Mattie to save her money. ", At this point it seems that Cora's story is out of place in the novel, a mistake by an otherwise meticulous author. community changes with each new historical shift. She tries to protect Mattie from the brutal beating Samuel Michael gives her when she refuses to name her baby's father. The men in the story exhibit cowardice, alcoholism, violence, laziness, and dishonesty. ". Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. His lying is obvious; hes simply One day, Kiswana finds one of Cora Lees children eating out of a After kissing her children good night, she returns to her bedroom and finds one of her shadow-like lovers waiting in her bed, and she folds "her evening like gold and lavender gauze deep within the creases of her dreams" and lets her clothes drop to the floor. She stresses that African Americans must maintain their identity in a world dominated by whites. It seems destined After a fight with Theresa, Lorraine goes to a party on her own. From that episode on, Naylor portrays men as people who take advantage of others. In the epilogue we are told that Brewster Place is abandoned, but does not die, because the dreams of the women keep it alive: But the colored daughters of Brewster, spread over the canvas of time, still wake up with their dreams misted on the edge of a yawn. her because she reminds him of his daughter. 23, No. preparation for the play. Brewster Place names the women, houses In their separate spaces the women dream of a tall yellow woman in a bloody green and black dress Lorraine. He tells Lorraine the sad story of his daughter who ended up getting. Lorraine and Theresa are the only lesbian residents of Brewster Place. Themes Better lay the fuck still, cunt, or I'll rip open your guts. to in the novelthe making of soup, the hanging of laundry, the diapering of babies, Brewster's death is forestalled and postponed. Source: Jill L. Matus, "Dream, Deferral, and Closure in The Women of Brewster Place" in Black American Literature Forum, spring, 1990, pp. Share directs emphasis to what they have in common: They are women, they are black, and they are almost invariably poor. He never helps his mother around the house. She is electrocuted and dies, leaving Lucielia By manipulating the reader's placement within the scene of violence, Naylor subverts the objectifying power of the gaze; as the gaze is trapped within the erotic object, the necessary distance between the voyeur and the object of voyeuristic pleasure is collapsed. why does lorraine remind ben of his daughter? Kiswana thinks that she is nothing like her mother, but when her mother's temper flares Kiswana has to admit that she admires her mother and that they are more alike that she had realized. 4, December, 1990, pp. Warning: "continue" targeting switch is equivalent to "break".Did you mean to use "continue 2"? Excitedly she tells Cora, "if we really pull together, we can put pressure on [the landlord] to start fixing this place up." Yet the substance of the dream itself and the significance of the dreamer raise some further questions. Hairston, however, believes Naylor sidesteps the real racial issues. for a group? When he leaves her anyway, she finally sees him for what he is, and only regrets that she had not had this realization before the abortion. her home and refuses to charge her rent. Since this chapter is her part of the narrative they are writing, her reaction to this news is even more pronounced than if John had related it. Her story starts with a description of her happy childhood. O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered: Accept our prayers on behalf of thy servant Robert, and grant him an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of thy saints; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Naylor's novel is not exhortatory or rousing in the same way; her response to the fracture of the collective dream is an affirmation of persistence rather than a song of culmination and apocalypse. Source: Donna Woodford, in an essay for Novels for Students, Gale, 1998. appearance that she takes interest in her children. Theirs is the only positive male-female relationship in Brewster Place. As the dream ends, we are left to wonder what sort of register the "actual" block party would occupy. why does lorraine remind ben of his daughter? While acknowledging the shriveling, death-bound images of Hughes's poem, Naylor invests with value the essence of deferralit resists finality. When he jumps bail, Mattie loses her house. Brewster Place is a housing development in an unnamed city. Her chapter begins with the return of the boyfriend who had left her eleven months before when their baby, Serena, was only a month old. The sudden interjection of an "objective" perspective into Naylor's representation traces that process of authorization as the narrative pulls back from the subtext of the victim's pain to focus the reader's gaze on the "object" status of the victim's body. Mattie's dream expresses the communal guilt, complicity, and anger that the women of Brewster Place feel about Lorraine. "The Women of Brewster Place Etta Mae has always lived a life very different from that of Mattie Michael. fight with Theresa, Lorraine goes to a party on her own. In the last paragraph of Cora's story, however, we find that the fantasy has been Cora's. Essays, poetry, and prose on the black feminist experience. By the end, Cora Lee begins to imagine a better future for her Mattie's journey to Brewster Place begins in rural Tennessee, but when she becomes pregnant she leaves town to avoid her father's wrath. They gang rape her Shortly afterward, however, he comes home to say that hes found Naylor uses many symbols in The Women of Brewster Place. Each woman in the book has her own dream. The chapter begins with a mention of the troubling dreams that haunt all the women and girls of Brewster Place during the week after Ben's death and Lorraine's rape. Mattie leaves her parents home because she is pregnant by a The power of the gaze to master and control is forced to its inevitable culmination as the body that was the object of erotic pleasure becomes the object of violence. By framing her own representation of rape with an "objective" description that promotes the violator's story of rape, Naylor exposes not only the connection between violation and objectification but the ease with which the reader may be persuaded to accept both.
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