The Watch and Livvie :: Literature Control Essays

The Watch and Livvie Solomons silver teach contained multifaceted import with regard to his character and its effect on Livvie--it represented prestige and wealth, image and obsession, and a life of dark retreat. For Solomon the watch represented the prestige and wealth that were rarely attained by colored person people. For he was a colored man that owned his land and had it written down in the courthouse. (P. 85) merely the watch also had another dimensionCit meant control over his life and his possessions, including Livvie. Livvie watched Solomon as he slept. She wondered what he might be dreaming ab knocked out(p) He might be dreaming of what time it was, for even through his eternal rest he kept track of it like a clock, and knew how much of it went by, and waked up knowing where the hands were even before he consulted the silver watch that he never let go. (P. 89) Solomon exhibited control in all areas of his life--he plant his bottle trees to keep evil spirits away 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 feeling 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 negative impaction on Livvie. She lived in a sheltered world--a world she did not see. She maxim 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 life of the fields and take a hoe and work until she fell stretched out and drenched with her efforts, like other girls, and laid her cheek against the laid-open earth and attaint the old man with her humbleness and delight?