"Like a Winding Sheet"
Like a Winding Sheet, written by Ann Petry in 1945, is a story that begins with a black man’s tough day at work, but takes a twisted turn. Johnson comes home after a hard day planning to kick his feet up and enjoy a relaxing evening at home with his wife, Mae. The ordinary idiosyncrasies Mae possesses begin to send Johnson over the edge and suddenly, something in him snaps. Johnson brutally beats his wife, quite possibly killing her. When this story takes such an unexpected turn the reader must stop to think, “How was this outcome foreshadowed in the story?” and “Was this outcome inevitable?” Upon first reading Like a Winding Sheet one may not catch all the hints as to what will happen to Mae in the end. In taking a closer look the reader finds that Petry foreshadows this tragic event all along. In the beginning of the story Johnson is waking up to go to work and he becomes twisted in the white sheets covering the bed. Mae laughs at this and says, “Looks like a winding sheet, a shroud…” (Petry 109). This foreshadows a fatality with the allusion to a shroud, which is a cloth wrapped around a corpse. After Mae and Johnson get ready for work she happens to glance at the calendar and
out of coffee and the waitress had nothing against him or his race. Even if Johnson would have waited until he got home to talk about his rough day, he still could have talked it over with Mae. Then he would have calmed down and not broken out in such a furious rage. Was it inevitable that this would be the outcome of the story? Absolutely not. It is, however, inevitable that Johnson’s anger would build up and result is some sort of outburst, but not in the brutal beating of his wife. Johnson had a hard day, but if he would have dealt with it by talking it out with a friend or coworker then his problems would not been elevated to the degree that they were. If Johnson would have collected his emotions at the time of the fight with his boss he would have taken the coffee situation more lightly and would have probably seen that the restaurant truly was Johnson becomes furious. “He felt a curious tingling in his fingers and he looked down at his hands. They were clenched tight, hard, ready to smash some of those small purple veins in her face” (111). The powerful language Petry uses to describe how Johnson feels at this moment shows he is a potentially violent man. After Johnson leaves work, he stops to get a cup a
Some topics in this essay:
Mae Johnson,
Finally Johnson’s,
Ann Petry,
Winding Sheet,
Mae Petry,
winding sheet,
outcome story,
reading winding sheet,
hard day,
johnson’s anger,
reading winding,
mae johnson,
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Approximate Word count = 836
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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