Discussion Board Post 3 Prompt

The short stories assigned were Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Shiloh.” Both stories show families dealing with a strong presence of the past–history and inheritance–and the effects this past has on the families’ present circumstances.

For Discussion Board Post 3: choose 1 short passage from “Everyday Use” and 1 short passage from “Shiloh” (no more than 1, maybe 2 sentences each), and compare the passages to each other based on how the characters within the 2 different stories deal with the past, history, and/or inheritance.

Include the sentences you’ve chosen from both stories in your Discussion Post, with all quoted words in quotation marks, of course. You’ll still want to aim for at least 200 words for your Discussion Post, NOT counting the quoted sentences.

As usual, be creative! Think intently about the characters in each story, their personalities and characteristics. Who might represent the past, and who might represent the present/future? How do the different characters interact with each other, in light of their relationship to historical time? What if some of the characters from “Everyday Use” actually interacted with the characters from “Shiloh”? What might their conversations be like?