Step 1: Decide on a working thesis statement.
Alice Walker’s “Roselily” portrays the conflicted
consciousness of Roselily as she is being married. This
conflict stems from Roselily’s inability to achieve her
own personal identity as an autonomous individual in
her culture.
Step 2: Identify the steps needed to prove the thesis.
We know she is conflicted through the entrapment images that
illustrate her feelings of powerlessness.
She feels powerless to control her fate.
Step 3: Illustrate with examples from the text.
When the preacher says, “to join this man and this woman,”
Roselily’s thoughts conjure up images of “ropes, chains,
handcuffs, his religion” (350).
Roselily feels like “cotton to be weighed” (349). She is as
powerless as a “rat, trapped, concerned, scurrying to and fro in
her head, peering through the windows of her eyes.
Step 4: Interpret the examples.
Walker uses many symbols of entrapment interwoven with
the vows of the marriage ceremony in order to reveal Roselily’s
inner conflict regarding her marriage. Just after the preacher
utters the words “to join this man and this woman,” Roselily’s
consciousness conjures up images of “ropes, chains, handcuffs,
his religion” (350). At its best, marriage is a joining of man and
woman in order to facilitate a life of sharing and happiness. For
Roselily, this joining emerges as a cumbersome existence akin
to slavery. Roselily envisions her new husband’s religion as
another form of entrapment, one which she does not understand
and one which will require her to deny the religion that she has
embraced her entire life.
This paragraph can continue interweaving Illustrations with
Interpretations. Remember that your illustrations must be in a
progressive order with the last as the strongest example. If you should
decide that this illustration is the strongest, simply insert layers of
illustration and interpretation before it. Never simply throw in an
illustration and expect your reader to interpret it—that is your job.
In addition to these symbols of entrapment, Walker reveals
Roselily’s powerlessness through the metaphors that Roselily
invokes to express her own self-worth. Right away in the story,
Roselily envisions herself as “cotton to be weighed” (349).
Economically, cotton is important to Roselily’s culture. Rural
Mississippi would depend upon the cotton crop for its survival.
Similarly, the culture depends upon the women in the
community to keep the family and the culture in working order.
Yet, just as cotton has no control over who buys and sells it,
Roselily feels powerless to control her destiny. She is simply
merchandise to be bartered over. Roselily is as powerless as a
“rat, trapped, concerned, scurrying to and fro in her head,
peering through the windows of her eyes” (352). Her strength
and identity are trapped inside herself. She can see the world as
it is, but she feels that no one can see the real person that she
strives to be. Through these images of cotton and a trapped rat,
Roselily expresses her lack of autonomy in her culture. She
does not have a voice, and no one cares enough to peer back
through the window of her eyes to see her real self.
Notice the transition leading from the first topic to the second.
Illustrations and interpretations are layered here. If you wish to
expound each example even further, the paragraph can be expanded into
two full paragraphs, with each paragraph exploring one example.