Short Story 1

To Hell With Dying

Alice Walker

1. Mr. Sweet was a loving and caring man, but also an alcoholic. The children loved to visit him as often as possible. He would play the guitar and sing a variety of songs, as the kids sat around him and listened. Mr. Sweet was also married and had one child. He was an older man, because he had grayish hair and wrinkles around his eyes.

There was a special family who really loved him and thought of him as part of there own family. There was many times when the community thought that he was going to die because he would have many sickness. When this "special family" came around he would get better, thanks to the kids. The youngest of the kids was a little girl, whom he referred to as his "little princess." She would be the one to sit on him and kiss and tickle him, to make him better, while her brother would inmate him playing the guitar.

Many times he would come so close to dying but they would always pull him back through. I think that their love and support always helped him remember someone loved him. Even when the girl grew up and went to college she never forgot him, she always came back to visit. One day she received a phone call that Mr. Sweet was sick again of course she left. Once she arrived, he was laying in his bed and she held him and he rubbed her hairline. This time Mr. Sweet didn't make it, he died.

I don't think the kids really understood death until Mr. Sweet's death. They just always thought that they could revise him every time. Mr. Sweet loved them because they always gave him hope and joy. He was like something that would always be there, in their thoughts. This really showed the girl that things don't always last forever.

2. Mr. Sweet: I think that he stayed sick a lot because he drunk too much and he wasn't suppose to. ( " He was constantly on the verge of being blind because he drunk , for he brewed his own liquor." ) He plays his guitar a lot because it was one of the unique things he could do since he couldn't have his dream jobs. ( "Mr. Sweet wanted to be a doctor or lawyer or sailor, only to find that black men fare better if they are not." )

The Girl ( Anonymous): She loved Mr. Sweet because he payed attention to her and she was special to him in many ways. ( " Mr. Sweet used to call me his princess, and I believed it." ) She would do anything for him because she thought of him as part of her family. ( "He was like a piece of rare and delicate china which was always being saved from breaking and which finally fell." )

3. Alice Walker, the author, showed me that Mr. Sweet was " an alcoholic and a guitar player." Not only this but she also described him as being "very melancholy and sad, though frequently when he was "feelin good" he'd dance around the yard." I figured out on my own that Mr Sweet had a loving heart because he made sure he made the children happy. ( " Toward all of the children he was very kind." )

4. Simile: A comparison between two unlike things using like or as.

Metaphor: One thing becomes another thing without the use of words such as, like, than, or resembles

Personification: A nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it were human

Allusion: Reference to a statement, a person, a place or an event from literature, etc.

Hyperbole: exaggeration

Irony: Contrast between what is said and what is really meant

5. Simile: "His mustache, which was long and sort of straggly, would shake like Spanish moss and was also that color."

Irony: "It was very sad Mr. Sweet Little was about to kick the bucket."

Simile: "He was like a piece of rare and delicate china which was always being saved from breaking."