Walking Across Egypt :: Walking Across Egypt Essays

Walking Across Egypt   Mattie Rigsbee is the main character in Clyde Edgertons southern style novel, Walking Across Egypt. Mattie is a seventy-eight year white-haired widow with two middle-aged children. Living alone in a small house, she makes sure that everything is taken c atomic number 18 of. Although begins to display some signs of aging, and her family is onerous to convince her to slow down her lifestyle, Matties character and mind setting prohibits her from nice the stereotypical elder. She must make a decision in which way of life to turn. "Im too old to keep a dog," she says to the dogcatcher as he is release with a brown fice that showed up on her doorstep. "Besides, Im slowing down," she says to her male child during lunch. The stereotypes of the elderly are influencing Matties life. She is telling herself not to do things because of her age whether or not she is physically able to do them, simply because people helper age with inabi lity and dependence upon others. Her family and friends are expecting and encouraging this dependence.Elaine and Robert, Matties two unwedded children, along with other family and friends, are encouraging her to be what they expect a seventy-eight year old woman to be. They talk about how she ask to get rest because she is slowing down and cant keep going as steady as she seems to think. When she decided to try and help a recent juvenile, Wesley Benfield, become a better person by taking him to church service and offering him to stay the night with her, Robert thought that Mattie was sick. collect Turnage, Matties older sister, has given up in to the stereotypes that are now plaguing Mattie, and insists that she do the same. In fact, she invites Mattie to accompany her to the funeral family line where they will each pick out a casket that they are to be buried in. Pearl pushes the subject, as if to force Mattie into realizing that she doesnt have some(prenominal) time left to live. Pearl also begins talking to Mattie about the previous(prenominal) and the fun that they once had, as if to tell Mattie that those days are all over and that it is time for her to begin a new chapter in her life. The future that Pearl has planned for herself,however, is totally contrary to the lifestyle that Mattie has chosen to pursue.