Walking Across Egypt Essay, Research Paper

Mattie Rigsbee is the main character in

Clyde Edgerton’s southern style novel, Walking Across Egypt. Mattie is

a seventy-eight year old widow with two middle-aged children. Living alone

in a small house, she makes sure that everything is taken care of. She

cooks, cleans, mows the lawn, and takes up numerous responsibilities with

the church. She is a very caring person with many friends and a family

that loves her dearly. At the time this novel takes place, Mattie is at

a turning point in her life. Confusion disturbed her, because the things

that people are telling her are not the words that she is ready or willing

to hear. Although begins to display some signs of aging, and her family

is trying to convince her to slow down her lifestyle, Mattie’s character

and mind setting prohibits her from becoming the stereotypical elder. She

must make a decision in which direction to turn.

As Mattie grows older, she notices that

she is beginning to display some signs that people in her state of North

Carolina associate with the elderly. These signs are influencing her decisions

about what she thinks she can and cannot do. She displays typical, elderly

forgetfulness as she washes the toilet seat with mouthwash rather than

with alcohol. And again displays it as she falls through the bottomless

rocking chair. Later she displays physical inability when she asks her

son Robert about helping with some yard work, which she had always taken

care of before.

“I’m too old to keep a dog,” (20) she says

to the dogcatcher as he is leaving with a brown fice that showed up on

her doorstep. “Besides, I’m slowing down,” she says to her son during lunch.

The stereotypes of the elderly are influencing

Mattie’s life. She is telling herself not to do things because of her age

whether or not she is physically able to do them, simply because people

associate age with inability and dependence upon others. Her family and

friends are expecting and encouraging this dependence.

Elaine and Robert, Mattie’s two unmarried

children, along with other family and friends, are encouraging her to be

what they expect a seventy-eight year old woman to be. They talk about

how she needs to get rest because she is slowing down and can’t keep going

as steady as she seems to think. When she decided to try and help a young

juvenile, Wesley Benfield, become a better person by taking him to church

and offering him to stay the night with her, Robert thought that Mattie

was sick.

“Robert was thinking about the symptoms.

What condition was his mother entering? Was it a phase of some sort? Was

she having some of those tiny strokes they talk about? Or Alzheimer’s?

…. Maybe she needed a long rest. She was slowing down.” (177-178)

He would have to tell Elaine about this

incident, because she is having the same fears as he.

Pearl Turnage, Mattie’s older sister, has

given in to the stereotypes that are now plaguing Mattie, and insists that

she do the same. In fact, she invites Mattie to accompany her to the funeral

home where they will each pick out a casket that they are to be buried

in. Pearl pushes the subject, as if to force Mattie into realizing that

she doesn’t have much time left to live. Pearl also begins talking to Mattie

about the past and the fun that they once had, as if to tell Mattie that

those days are over and that it is time for her to begin a new chapter

in her life. The future that Pearl has planned for herself, however, is

totally contrary to the lifestyle that Mattie has chosen to pursue. Mattie

wants more of those good times to talk about.

Mattie has grown up with the same expectations

of elderly people as everyone else, however, she chooses not to live her

life based on these expectations, but rather on how her feelings lead her.

At the beginning of the novel, she is unsure about what direction she wants

to take in life. She turns down the dog, and says that she needs to slow

down, but at the end she makes a realization about the person that she

wishes to be. She makes the comment at the beginning about how she is “too

old” to keep a dog, yet at the end, she asks whether or not he is still

in the pound. She even is laughing about falling through the bottom of

the rocking chair even though she was worried about injuring herself at

the time it happened. And she sends her children through a loop when she

decides to raise the juvenile, Wesley, in her home. Her family is totally

against her decisions, but she seems to be rather confident in how things

have turned out, and has made some large plans for her future. She seems

to feel that God has kept her for a reason, and she must give every effort

to fulfill His wishes and give aid to Wesley in his time of need.

Although she is beginning to display some

signs of aging and her family tries desperately to have her slow her life

down, Mattie Rigsbee has a strong character that is prohibiting her from

becoming the stereotypical elder. She has made a decision in her life on

which road that she will take to begin the rest of her life. She has not

turned onto the dead-end road of reminiscence, disability and dependence,

but rather onto the long, fulfilling road of life, happiness, and salvation.

Life is good.