Three short stories

Three short stories (Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," William Faulkner's "Barn Burning," and Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing") explore different perspectives on the nature of the family. In all three stories, the family is shown to be a paradoxical force in the lives of the protagonists, with both positive and negative effects. In each of the stories the family is shown to be a crucible in which the individual is shaped, and at the same time a constrictive force from which the individual is driven to break free in order to forge his or her own separate identity. The three stories show variations on this theme.

Walker's story is the tale of a mother, two sisters, and the grandmother's quilts. It is the story of what it means to be true to one's roots, in this case one's family or racial roots. One sister (along with her mother) discover the truth and goodness o the family, while the other sister is ashamed of her family roots and suffers a shallow and bitter life because of her failure to see the human soul behind an economically limited existence.

Maggie, the younger sister of Dee, and the mother of Maggie and Dee (the narrator) await the return of Dee, who has been living away from home for a long time. Maggie and the mother see Dee as a sophisticated, independent and strong woman who is not like them at all. Dee is in fact a completely self-centered person who cares about nobody but herself. She is ashamed of her roots, her true roots, her family. It is ironic to fin

of her family life and history, so does Sarty in Faulkner's story have to finally see the hateful insanity of his father in order to free himself from it. Sarty's father is a man who lives only to gnaw on the injustices life has dealt him and to plan destructive acts in order to get his revenge. The boy is swept up in his father's madness, just as the wife and daughters are terrified of it. The boy is brainwashed by his father into seeing others as enemies. Finally, however, he boy must face a choice which will give him the chance to break free. His father wants him to take part in a barn burning against a perceived enemy: Then he was moving, running. . . . This the old habit, the old blood which he had not been permitted to choose for himself, which had been bequeathed him willy nilly and which had run for so long and who new where, battening on what of outrage and savagery and lust) before it came to him. I could keep on, he thought, I could run on and on and never look back, never need to see his face again. Only I can't. I can't (Faulkner 152). The boy cannot run away to freedom at that point, but later he finds the courage to break away. Even as he runs for freedom, leaving his father behind to apparently be shot for h