And, of course, the main reason why I cited this passage, the images used to give Maggie some "roundness" as a fictional character, the fact that she is compared to a lame animal, an injured dog. The reader finds out that she was burned badly in a fire. The point that Walker is driving home is, Maggie and Dee come from the same place, but are, indeed, two different people.
The question one may ask then is why couldn't Walker have told the story in a linear fashion with different, but equally vivid details? Why did she have to construct it in a non-linear way? There is no clear-cut answer(s) to these types of questions, stories sometimes just happen they way they do. And maybe those are the wrong questions to be asking in the first place. After all, and to continue with the established thesis, the story "works" they way it is structured. The non-linear form follows the affect-driven function. The wistful mother telling the reader about her days slaughtering pigs, her dreams of meeting and connecting with her daughter on a talk show, her practical perspective (provincial prospective) of family heirlooms, her plain and honest prose, all play on the heartstrings of the reader. Sometimes taking...
It's always fun to speculate, but it's also about accepting something for what is or accepting someone for who they are.
Conveniently, the idea of acceptance is one of the major themes explored throughout the story, consider this exchange, "You ought to try to make something of yourself, too. Maggie. It's really a new day for us. But from the way you and Mama still live you'd never know it" (Walker 59). Wangero (Dee) has never accepted or embraced her upbringing. She is projecting her beliefs, her values, her ideals on her Mother and Sister who are, who they are. They are not going to change, they are content chewing snuff and living under a tin roof.
Likewise, as readers, we must recognize that stories are told they way they are on purpose. And that purpose, in this case the form, is inextricably bound to the overall affect the story creates in the reader. As much as we like to deconstruct and dissect aspects of fictional narratives, we must bear in mind that fiction works because it is indivisible, because form not only follows function, but because form is melded to function.
