#88 The Child Who Favored Daughter- Alice Walker
This heartbreaking tale is one of sin, betrayal, forbidden
love. The kind of love that drove his beloved sister to madness, he sees now in
his own daughter.
“His love for her had turned into a dull ache of constant
loathing, and he dreamed vague fearful dreams of a cruel revenge on the white
lover who shamed them all.”
“If he cannot frighten her into chastity with his voice he
will threaten her with the gun.”
“In a world where innocence and guilt became further
complicated by color and race, he felt hesitant and weary of living as though
all the world were out to trick him.”
Madness has gripped all of them, just one generation away
from servitude, they struggle with innocence, family, and obligation, but they
fail in all: “Stumbling weakly towards the house through the shadows of the
trees, he tries to look up beseechingly to the stars, but the sky is full of
clouds…”
In a way, failure is its own form of failure: “resignation
is a kind of dying.”
Notable Passage: “The heat from the sun is oppressively hot
but she dos not feel its heat as much as its warmth, for there is a cold spot
underneath the hot skin of her back that encloses her heart and reaches chilled
arms around the bottom cages of her ribs.”
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