高级英语 张汉熙 上册第四课.ppt

Unit Four Everyday Use for Your Grandmama Teaching Objectives To understand the story To understand ccolloquial, slangy or black English To appreciate the style and rhetoric of the text. 4. To understand cultural difference between nationalities in the US The author Walker, Alice (1944- ), American author and poet, most of whose writing portrays the lives of poor, oppressed African American women in the early 1900s. The Color Purple which won the Pulitzer Prize of Fiction （普利策小说奖） and The American Book Award（美国图书奖）. She was also active in the movements for civil and womens rights. Walkers other works The story “Everyday Use” is included in the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 2nd ed.). The story describes three women. The mother is a working woman without much education, but not without intelligence or perception. The two daughters form a sharp contrast in every conceivable way: appearance, character, personal experience, etc. the story reaches its climax at the moment when Dee, the elder daughter, wants the old quilts only to be refused flatly by the mother who intends to give them to Maggie, the younger one. The old quilts, made from pieces of clothes worn by grand-and great-grandparents and stitched by Grandma’s hand, are clearly a symbol of the cultural heritage of the black people. Their different feelings about the quilts reveal their different attitudes towards their heritage as blacks. Theme The story addresses itself to the dilemma of African Americans who, in striving to escape prejudice and poverty, risk a terrible deracination, a sundering from all that has sustained and defined them. Walker is saying that true art not only represents its culture, but is an inseparable part of that culture. The manner in which the quilts are treated shows Walkers view of how art should be treated Alice Walker is using the quilts, and the fate of those quilts, to make the point that art can only have meaning if it remains connected to the culture it sprang