Gloria Naylors Mama Day Essay -- Gloria Naylor Mama Day

Gloria Naylors mamma DayIn 1988 Gloria Naylor wrote the novel Mama Day in hopes to show the world that integrity can either accept the establish they are contendt and make it come stop away to the advantage of themselves and others, or one can hide from their pain and live a life scare of what may come in the future. Mama Day is set on an island off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia that is inhabited by the posterity of a slave population. The main characters in the novel Ophelia, Abigail and Miranda, also called Mama Day, all experienced a spread of pain in their lives it is how they chose to deal with their experiences that sets them apart from from each one other. Abigail Day is an older member of the willow Springs community, sis to Miranda, and grandmother to Cocoa. Instead of embracing the pain Abigail experienced through out her life and turning it into something positive for herself and others, she tried to change the past, and that only left field her wit h more pain. Abigail was the middle child of three babes. When Peace her younger sister fell in a well, their father and mother became distant with each other and in the end her mother threw herself off a falling off because she could not deal with the pain. When talking about her mother Miranda says, Mother but cooked at all. And later she didnt eat very much. Later she didnt do nothing but sit in that rocker Too much sorrowmuch too much. And I was too young to give her peace. Even Abigail tried and failed(243). When Abigail was younger her father carved wood and Abigail, tried to mannikin with flesh what her daddy couldnt form from wood(262). Her whole puerility was spent trying to make up for her sisters death. afterward her mothers death, Abigail still tried to giv... ...nted it to. Mama Day tells Bernice, sept say I can do things that most cant do. Whether thats true or not, I am willing to alleviate you(87). Mama Day devised a plan to help Bernice keep her consistency busy and her mind off of getting pregnant. All the people of Willow Springs admired the weight that Bernice put on and the strength she was developing. When these tactics did not work Mama Day promised to go to the Other Place and help Bernice in a way that Bernice would have to keep a incomprehensible forever. Mama Day was the wisest of the three women. She realized that there had been a lot of pain in her life and her familys history, but she took the pain and moody it into something positive for herself and those around her. She didnt try to change it like Abigail or ignore it like Cocoa. She embraced it, and helped to change the lives of many people because of it.