Red Mocassins
The Power of a Mother?s Love
In the story ?Red Mocassins? by Susan Power, she tries to get her readers to feel a certain way about specific characters in her story. The story pushes me to be annoyed with Joyce, and genuinely like Anna. Power portrays Joyce to be lazy, inconsiderate, selfish and, most importantly, a bad mother. The complete opposite of this is her cousin, Anna, who is loving, generous and nurturing. Several places in the text demonstrate the qualities of each of these two women. Because of this evidence in the text, it is obvious that this author wants me not to like Joyce, and feel compassion towards Anna.
Power makes Joyce look like a bad mother right from the beginning of the story.
Joyce is portrayed not to be ?mother material? because Anna, her cousin, is the one working on Bernardine?s first Sioux costume. Power says in the text that ?Ordinarily a mother would do this, but Dina?s was the next thing to useless. Joyce Blue Kettle had never gotten close enough to a needle to stick herself, let alone sew a costume? (409). A reader already looks at Joyce
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