Success and Failure in Alice Walker’s To Hell With Dying Essay example

Success and Failure in Alice Walker’s "To Hell With Dying"Â   Alice Walker’s "To Hell With Dying" appears on the surface to be a story of a man who has many near-death experiences. However, I believe that the story of Mr. Sweet shows the side of depression and failure that Alice Walker might have faced had she not pushed her way to success. Mr. Sweet grew up in a time period where the life between whites and blacks was very segregated. However, Mr. Sweet "had been ambitious as a boy, wanted to be a doctor or lawyer or sailor, only to find that black men fare better if they [were] not" (Walker 1143). When he realized this defeat "he turned to fishing as his only claim to doing anything extraordinarily well" (1143). This failure seemed to overcome Mr. Sweet as he turned to the bottle as a sort of sanctuary. Mr. Sweet "was constantly on the verge of being blind drunk" (1144); however, to the kids this made him the perfect playmate. Often when Mr. Sweet was "feeling good" (1144), he would dance about and play in the yard with the children. When he was in this state he was just as vulnerable as they were. In fact, most of the time the children won the battles. An ironic behavior that Mr. Sweet has in this story, however, is that we read about him playing with the neighbors’ children, but we never read about him playing with his own child. Maybe this is because of the second failure that occurred in Mr. Sweet’s life. When he was younger he had to marry Miss Mary, for she was pregnant with his child; "he was not sure that Joe Lee, [Miss Mary’s] baby, was also his baby" (1144). Mr. Sweet had been in love with another woman though. He had made up a song that he played on his guitar on this unhappy part of his life. When Mr. Sw... ..., was another Mr. Sweet. However, this Mr. Sweet took her route of success. He expressed his pain through the poetry he wrote so that whoever wanted to could read it and feel the pain that he had to overcome. Mr. Sweet, by showing Alice Walker what would happen to her if she surrendered to the racism of the outside world, helped her achieve success. Works Cited Walker, Alice. "To Hell With Dying." The Harper Anthology of Fiction. Ed. Sylvan Barnet. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 1143-1147. Walker, Alice. "Remembering Mr. Sweet." The Harper Anthology of Fiction. Ed. Sylvan Barnet. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 1147-1149. Works Consulted Harrison, Faye. "Writing Against The Grain: Cultural Politics Of Difference In The Work Of Alice Walker." Women Writing Culture. Ed. R. Behar and D.A Gordon. University of California Press, 1195. 233-245. Â