Quiz

Please write specifically about Mary's feelings about her grandmother. What are some of her grandmother's habits? What does she suffer from? What does she think about Mary and Lecia? What does she reveal to Mary about Mary's mother?

Mary has very distinct and developed feelings for her grandma. It is extremely obvious that Mary does not hold a very high opinion of her. I believe that she went as far as saying that she did not care whether she lived or died. On page 46 Karr writes, "I remember not one tender feeling for or from her." This quote shows the relationship that the two had and their mutual feeling of disdain for one another. Mary even profited in the form of Kool-Aide and cookies whenever retelling her grandmother's death to the neighborhood ladies. It is clear that Mary has very little respect for her grandma and thinks of her as a nusance rather than an older figure to look up to. One of the reason's Mary does not particularly like her grandma is because of her habits. One such habit that Mary, and probably the entire family, dislikes is her grandmother's bossyness. She is always telling to people to do things, such as make new curtains becuase the old ones are ugly or telling the mom when and how to punish Mary and Lecia. The grandmother's worst habit is probably telling everyone how to live their lives. After she moves in, the family's traditional ways of doing things are changed. The family no longer eats dinner in bed with their backs to one another. Mary grows to resent how her life was forever altered by the presence of Grandma Moore in the family's life. The reason her grandmother has moved in with them is because she found out that she had cancer. The cancer seemed to start in the foot and after a crude treatment with mustard gas had to be amputated above the knee. The cancer eventually spread to her brain. However, she was able to keep on living while most people with the same ailment would have died a long time ago. Through the reading it is to pick up on Grandma Moore's favoritism of Lecia over Mary. She seems to find Mary a wild almost barbaric child. At the same time she seems impressed with Lecia because she was able to quickly learn the skill of tatting at a young age.