Women Writer's Paper

Joel Ferdon

ENGL 335

Bruner

9/1/10

Response to Nineteen Fifty-Five

The words that I can use to describe this piece are beautiful, but at the same time so very tragic. Walker provides us with a spin on the king of Rock and Roll. This is a situation that no one probably took the time to truly think about, but you can tell that society, and especially Elvis, had a great influence on Walker’s life during this time. Some of the most influential passages to me are when Gracie Mae has interactions with Elvis. I thought it was brilliant how Walker showed both the progression of time, but also the two main characters through the progression of time. Gracie Mae would get fat, thus Elvis would get fat. “They don’t have nothing to talk about. That’s why I eat so much.” This line shows a delightful spin on the way that Elvis would one day end up dying.

Also, it was interesting how Walker decided to keep Elvis’ name out of the piece, and instead called him Traynor. This made Elvis more of a human, more of a person that other people could relate to, which wasn’t something that Elvis had much of during his lifetime. I felt as if a women’s perspective to this story added more heart and feeling than I think a man could have approached the piece with, especially someone who lived in the time of Elvis. Walker adds a certain amount of honesty that is found throughout Afircan-American literature, especially in the early to mid twentieth century. A piece of African-American literature that comes to mind that has the same amount of honesty as Walker’s piece is Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.