Winter Notes

Ohai peoples of Ms. Hollow's class

Winter notes

Winter brainstorming: cold, barren, unfriendly, brutal weather, discomfort, dark, death, depression, ill health. :)

Opening of winter passage:  "My daddy's face is a study." 

Claudia and Frieda's father emulates the winter season.

Claudia describes his features: 

- eyes= "cliff of snow threatning to avalanche"

-eyebrows="bent black limbs of leafless trees"

-skin="pale cheerless yellow of winter sun"

-jaw="edges of snowbound field"

-forehead="frozen sweep of the Erie, currents of gelid thoughts in the darkness".

 "vulcan" 

The narrator describes her father as a hardened man only in the face of the foul winter. He struggles to keep his family safe and protected during the harsh season with an intensity that earns him the title of "wolf killer", "hawk fighter", "night and day".

The passage with Maureen Peal

Maureen Peal is a huge source of envy for Claudia although she is determined to hate her. 

This wealthy café-au-lait girl with "fluffy yellow sweaters", "pink cupcakes", and "egg salad", represents a fake spring that contrasts with the harder lives of the other children. 

Freida wears ripped brown stockings, and hates her for the fact that Maureen reminds her constantly of where she comes from.

-If there were to be a scale that meant your happiness was determined by how dark you were, Maureen would be happiest (spring) , Claudia and Frieda figuring somewhere in the middle (autumn?) , and Pecola on the very bottom (winter). 

When Pecola is being bullied by the other children at the playground, she is once again in the center of all the violent cold in the world, impugned for her father's "sleeping habits". Even the other children seem to regard her as more "black" than they ("black e'mo"). It seems that Pecola might even attract hatred or brutality.

Geraldine is another character who reminds the reader of a fake spring, but hers is warped. She finds no contentment in endlessly arranging her house with "fake flowers" and doilies, she has no goal to reach other than to seem more "white". She is never happy, because she can only be satisfied by knowing she is "whiter" than other blacks....which isn't going to happen.  

She calls Pecola a "little black bitch".

She's brainwashed, running away from the truth.

As for the whores that Mr. Henry is entertaining at the Macteers, they seem to be the only sturdy characters that can last through any winter, and have lasted so far. They seem fearless and strong and wise.