The Watch and Livvie :: Literature Control Essays

The Watch and Livvie Solomons fluid watch contained mixed significance with regard to his character and its effect on Livvie--it represented prestigiousness and wealth, affirm and obsession, and a action of dark retreat. For Solomon the watch represented the prestige and wealth that were rarely attained by colored people. For he was a colored man that owned his land and had it written down in the courthouse. (P. 85) Yet the watch also had a nonher dimensionCit meant control over his life and his possessions, including Livvie. Livvie watched Solomon as he slept. She wondered what he might be dreaming nearly He might be dreaming of what time it was, for even by his sleep he kept track of it like a clock, and knew how oft of it went by, and waked up k outrighting where the hands were even before he consulted the silver watch that he never let go. (P. 89) Solomon exhibited control in all(prenominal) areas of his life--he planted his bottle trees to keep evil spirits awa y from his home, he had a clean dirt yard, and he evenly planted his roses on either side of the house. (P. 86) Knowing he owned these possessions, I believe, gave Solomon the depression he controlled his life. The white man or anyone else did not control him. Livvie viewed this control as strict, but it was obsession. Unfortunately, all this control had a very ban impact on Livvie. She lived in a sheltered world--a world she did not see. She saw what she could get out to see--almost what she could steal--even in her mind. But what if she would walk now into the heart of the fields and take a hoe and work until she reduce stretched out and drenched with her efforts, like other girls, and laid her cheek against the laid-open nation and shamed the old man with her humbleness and delight?