Team Maggie

"She looked at her sister with something like fear but she wasn't mad at her. This was Maggie's portion. This was the way she knew God to work." (Walker, pg. 70)

The words that struck me as the most important was the entire last sentence. "This was the way she knew God to work." I interpreted this to mean that she knew, and accepted, that she was never meant to have things go well for her. She was the less attractive and less educated sister, permenantly scarred from a fire that burned her home, and had lived through far trauma more than her silly older sister could probably even begin to imagine. However, she didn't let this make her bitter, but rather became complacent. She knew life wasn't fair, and she wasn't going to fight it.

Before this, while I didn't have anything against Maggie, she also didn't really catch my attention all that much. She was just the gawky girl who didn't enjoy anybody's company but her mother's. These three sentences showed that while Maggie was still all those things, she was also gracious. She was willing to give up one of the only things she was ever promised to have that didn't involve trauma or suffering in some form, and she was willing to do so to spare her sister's feelings. These quilts, after all, were probably the first and only things Maggie had that Dee coveted. It was her willingness to give up the quilts that showed that they truly belonged with her. It wasn't about who would take better care of them, but rather who deserved them more.

I was impressed by how easy it was for Maggie to give up something she seemed to cherish so much, even though it was obvious how ungrateful Dee really was to have all these things. Dee just blew through the house, taking whatever she wanted, because ""no" is not a world the world ever learned to say to her", and instead of being angry or even a little irritated, Maggie just gave in without even a second thought. I was surprised to see that, despite the fact that she seemed to dislike Dee (avoiding her when she visited, and feeling uncomfortable in her presence), she obviously cared about her sister enough to give her something just to make her happy. Dee didn't deserve her sisters love, and she certainly didn't even seem to care.