Literary Devices in You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Mostly Southern Georgia, Mid-1960sWhile some of Walker's characters make quick trips north to NYC or west to California, most of the serious action takes place in the South. It's where Walker's nar...
Narrator Point of View
First Person (Central Narrator), Various Forms of Third PersonThe stories in this book are varied. Some feel like straight-up short fiction; others seem more like academic essays or autobiography....
Genre
Historical Fiction, Thinly Veiled AutobiographySeveral of these stories—"Nineteen Fifty-Five," "Advancing Luna—and Ida B. Wells," "Elethia," "Laurel," and "Source"—rely on a historical settin...
Tone
Frank, Humorous, ThoughtfulWalker has no problem telling it like it is, to the point of bluntness. For example: "Like many thoughtful women of the seventies, she had decided women were far more int...
Writing Style
Conversational and Colloquial, Occasionally AcademicWalker illustrates the flexibility of her writing style best when she puts two characters from different worlds side by side with each other. Thi...
What's Up With the Title?
Walker gives a shout-out in her dedication to Mamie Smith, who sang the "red hot jazz" tune "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down." Smith's refrain runs something like this: You can't keep a good man dow...
What's Up With the Epigraph?
"It is harder to kill something that is spiritually alive than it is to bring the dead back to life." —Hermann Hesse, SiddharthaWalker's use of Hesse's wise words is meant to jibe with her notion...
What's Up With the Ending?
There are lots of endings in any collection of short stories—14 in this one, to be exact—so we're going to look at the bigger picture here. Walker ends her book with "Source," the story of two...
Tough-o-Meter
(8) Snow LineWe're not gonna lie: this is one tough read. Walker tackles hard issues and picks at raw patches in the American conscience, including racism, lynching, rape, abortion, pornography, an...
Plot Analysis
This is a collection of unrelated short stories, so it would be impossible to trace a single narrative arc throughout the text. We'd love to give you an analysis of each story, but we have some bad...
Trivia
Alice Walker is so contented with life that she wouldn't mind coming back as a turnip. (Source)When she was a little girl, Alice Walker lost her vision in one eye when her brother shot her with a B...
Steaminess Rating
NC-17Um, yeah, so some of the content here might actually be awarded the old-school "X" rating, precisely because it deals directly with pornography—we get both images and storylines dealing with...
Allusions
Literary and Philosophical ReferencesHermann Hesse, Steppenwolf ("Source")Laura Lederer,Take Back the Night ("Coming Apart: By Way of Introduction to Lorde, Teish and Gardner")Audre Lorde ("Coming...