Literature in My Life

Literature in My Life As English class has progressed this semester, we have read story after story. Typically I find myself relating to at least one character in each tale, sometimes numerous characters. More often than not, the character I relate to reminds me of someone I know more than of myself. Two characters have stood out to me more than others however, they are the unnamed old woman, from A visit of Charity, and Jimmy Cross, from The Things They Carried. The old woman, who I believe is losing her mind to Alzheimer’s Disease, lives with her roommate Addie, who is sick and tired of living. She reminds me of my grandmother, who is ninety four and has Alzheimer’s Disease. My grandmother lives with my family and I, she is never happy, she sits in her rocking chair, like in the story, and plays solitaire all day everyday. She no longer can retain information and has no idea what year it is. Just like when the old woman asked Marian, her visitor, for a penny to buy candy, My grandmother will go out to eat with us and pay for a ten dollar meal with a dollar, thinking it is more than enough. She will go to church and put a dime in the giving basket, because she believes she is still living in years past. Most of my grandmother’s belongings had to be thrown away when she moved in with us because they were either moldy and decaying, or just couldn’t fit in our house. she has a few things that she has kept such as pictures, her dresser, her chair and bed. This reminds me of when Addie starts to yell and says, “[…] You never came and you never went. You never were anything- only here. You never were born![…] You’re a stranger- a perfect stranger![…].”. This scares me to think about, as far as I’m concerned my grandmother has been dead for two years now, the woman living with me is not her, just a woman who I do not know, a stranger. Her personality is gone, and it is like she was never born, no one will ever know who she was or what she did. She is dead to