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Analysis Of Dusting By Julia Alvarez

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Often times it is difficult for children to find their niche, so many of them have to explore several very different lifestyles until they are happy. In Julia Alvarez’s poem “Dusting,” she expresses this very crucial time of her childhood in a unique and symbolic way. With this in mind, one must be educated on Alvarez’s childhood before examining this poem since it affects the meaning as a whole. Until she was about ten years old, Alvarez lived in the Dominican Republic (Biography). However, after an unfortunate situation in which her family failed at overthrowing the dictator, Julia and her entire family moved to New York in search of a better lifestyle. Consequently, Alvarez’s transition into the United States left her confused on how to conduct herself due to the cultural barriers and brain development occurring. “Dusting” delves further into the emotions of an experience like Alvarez’s through literary devices. In this poem, the title “Dusting” plays a significant role to the meaning of it as a whole. This title is …show more content…

Perhaps this literary device was used to show that the narrator, when she reached this specific emotional state, began to feel that all things around her were going against the same pressures of being normal that she desired to go against. Ultimately, the word “anonymous” sums up the whole fear of the narrator that the poem expresses. This simple word to end the poem symbolizes the mother, the action of dusting away one’s name, and the last thing the narrator wanted to be. Without the word “anonymous,” this literary piece would lack the most significant symbol and the readers may be confused due to an unclear conclusion. Therefore, the poem needs to end this exact

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