Essay about Analysis of Walking Across Egypt by Clyde...

Analysis of Walking Across Egypt by Clyde Edgerton Mattie Rigsbee is the main character in Clyde Edgertons southern style novel, Walking Across Egypt. Mattie is a seventy-eight year old widow with two middle-aged children. Living alone in a small house, she makes sure that everything is taken care of. She cooks, cleans, mows the lawn, and takes up numerous responsibilities with the church. She is a very caring person with many friends and a family that loves her dearly. At the time this novel takes place, Mattie is at a turning point in her life. Confusion disturbed her, because the things that people are telling her are not the words that she is ready or willing to hear. Although begins to display some signs of aging, and her family†¦show more content†¦Besides, Im slowing down, she says to her son 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 associate age with inability and dependence upon others. Her family and friends are expecting and encouraging this dependence. Elaine and Robert, Matties two unmarried 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 needs 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 young juvenile, Wesley Benfield, become a better person by taking him to church and offering him to stay the night with her, Robert thought that Mattie was sick. Robert was thinking about the symptoms. What condition was his mother entering? Was it a phase of some sort? Was she having some of those tiny strokes they talk about? Or Alzheimers? .... Maybe she needed a long rest. She was slowing down. (177-178) He would have to tell Elaine about this incident, because she is having the same fears as he. Pearl Turnage, Matties older sister, has given 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 home where