Mama day who is ruby

The Mama Day character juxtaposed against those of Dr. Buzzard, the charlatan "medicine man," and Ruby, who works the spell on Cocoa, creates interesting questions about what "alternative medicine" is, as well as questions about what kind of medicine is validated in Western society and what is dismissed. The question of Cocoa's illness is fascinating. George thinks it is "brain fever;" Cocoa thinks it is a virus at first;" Mama Day knows it is nightshade poisoning, but also knows it is more than that.

Cocoa's symptoms change as she experiences more and more hallucinations, and readers are tempted to think what Cocoa experiences as worms eating her away from the inside are simply that, and the horrible stench is simply an infection until, after having sex with her, George finds one of the worms on his penis.

What caused Cocoa's mysterious illness and her healing are never answered, compelling readers to consider the extent to which the body's mechanisms of illness and healing remain a mystery. Publisher Random House: Vintage. Toggle navigation. Before she can start work, though, Cocoa must return to Willow Springs to visit her grandmother, Abigail Day, and great aunt, Miranda.

For example, Cocoa is picked up at the airport by a Dr. Cocoa and George eventually fall in love and get married. Junior Lee invites Cocoa to see a musician with him, but Miranda forbids it, as she is afraid of what a jealous Ruby might do in retribution. The poison causes Cocoa to suffer horrific hallucinations, and she becomes gravely ill. Meanwhile, a powerful hurricane strikes Willow Springs and destroys the only bridge connecting the island to the mainland, effectively preventing George from getting professional medical help for Cocoa.

At the hen house, George struggles in vain to find something to return to Miranda. In the process, he suffers serious injuries and dies when his heart gives out. Over the next three months, Cocoa recovers from the poison and moves to Charleston, South Carolina, where she eventually starts a family with another man but never forgets about George.

Nevertheless, soon after Cocoa assumes her new job, George invites her to dinner. The interaction is strained at best, unsalvageable at worst.

However, George still wants to see Cocoa, mainly because he wants to convince her that even after seven years, she has not come to appreciate the real New York. In short, he wants to introduce her to his world, not as an outsider or a tourist, but as a participant. Before she met George, Cocoa identified persons of different ethnic groups by the food s associated with that group, a mode of reference offensive to George. By January Cocoa and George are married. The early phase of their marriage is fraught with the typical adjustments: sharing space, dividing domestic responsibilities, managing household finances, all the while trying to retain individual identities.

And for the first four years, George still insisted on their taking separate vacations, he to the Super Bowls every January and she back to Willow Springs for her annual August homecoming. Cocoa would have preferred to travel with George, but she tries to remain sensitive to hispassion for sports, which she does not share, and to his obsession with work projects major ones that always surfaced in August. Finally, in George agrees to accompany Cocoa to Willow Springs, a decision that would render their lives changed forever.

Even though George does not meet Abigail and Mama Day for four years, he has spoken with them numerous times on the phone, and he has favored them with gifts and money in the interim.

In this fashion he has ingratiated himself with the older women, who have since the marriage admonished Cocoa not to badger George about his busy schedule.

Satisfied that George is a decent and sincere man, who loves Cocoa unconditionally, they have been content to meet him in his own time. Needless to say, when the day finally arrives, all of Willow Springs is abuzz with excitement, though Mama Day tries to mask her enthusiasm. Never to be outdone or outwitted, she maintains a calm demeanor while Abigail is practically manic as the time approaches. Consequently, the inhabitants of Willow Springs assume a prominent role in the work, especially title character Mama Day.

Now ninety years old, Mama Day serves the island as a healer, mentor, counselor, and spiritualist. And though no one would openly refer to her as a conjure woman, her leanings toward the occult are suspect. When George first meets the two women, he comments on their rather youthful demeanor, as their spirits seem to defy their eighty-five-and ninety-year-old bodies.

It becomes immediately apparent that Willow Springs is another world that is guided by its own rules, mores, and sensibilities. Soon after their arrival on the island, George and Cocoa undergo noticeable transformations. While George begins to relish his stay on the island, Cocoa becomes more agitated.

To some degree, she is a bit jealous of the way not only her family but also the other residents have taken to George. Ever since she left Willow Springs, Cocoa has always managed to separate her Willow Springs life from her city life. This compartmentalization of her life has given her balance so that no matter what was occurring in her work and personal life, she could always depend on Willow Springs to be her childhood sanctuary.

Leaving it as a separate place retained its innocence, and hence her own. But now that she has come home with her husband, Cocoa is forced to reconcile these two worlds. And even though she complained during the first four years ofher marriage that George would not accompany her to Willow Springs, she now finds his presence on the island unsettling. Ironically, George seems, at least initially, to have acclimated himself quite well to the place and the people of Willow Springs.

Because Cocoa is accustomed to enjoying undivided attention when she returns home, she is mildly frustrated that she must now share the spotlight with her husband. On the one hand, she is pleased that family and friends like George, but on the other hand, she is offended that her marriage somehow validates her in a way that she never before experienced. In having to reconcile in essence, marry her two worlds, Cocoa is forced to mature and accept new challenges. In many ways, her entire relationship with George has been a vehicle for growth.

This visit to Willow Springs provides yet another phase of this development. Because George never had a real family, he seems to thrive in the hospitality of the Day family. Soon he is tirelessly performing chores at the homes of both women, further ingratiating himself with them and stunning Cocoa with his charm.

Soon, however, matters take a turn for the worse. Appreciating the skepticism of a very practical-minded engineer and not wanting to shatter his reality by schooling him on Willow Springs reality, both Abigail and Mama Day are reluctant to tell him the truth the Willow Springs truth. As a consequence, the one bridge that leads to the mainland the outside world is destroyed, as are all phone and radio connections.

Willow Springs, then, is completely isolated from the world that George knows. As none of the science, practicality, or reason that he relies on can help him or Cocoa, George thinks he has entered a nightmare from which he will never awake.

The family home is a mystical place where known reality is less discernible. In addition to coming here periodically to gather medicinal herbs, Mama Day often seeks sanctuary in the other place to commune with her ancestors and to seek guidance as she tackles yet another modern dilemma. According to Mama Day, if Cocoa is to be healed, every one of her closest human connections, especially George to whom she is bonded legally, spiritually, and emotionally, must embrace Willow Springs truths.

In his pursuit, however, George, who is plagued with a weak heart, is attacked by the chickens, suffers heart failure, and dies. He still succeeds in saving Cocoa, though, because he gives his life in sacrifice for hers. Three years after his death, Cocoa remarries and, in the ensuing years, gives birth to two sons, naming one after George in honor of her undying love for him and in respect for the sacrifice he made for her. In the course of this work, each of them grows as an individual and as a partner.

As they hail from two different worlds two different cultures , each serves as the perfect sparring partner for the other. Early on they learn that differences breed exposure to the unknown, and in demystifying the unknown, they develop into more emotionally substantive beings.

An orphan who is raised in a state shelter for boys, George, given only the basics of life, is taught early on not to expect much from the future. Instead, Mrs. As a result, before he meets Cocoa, George has lived according to this one precept, taking one day at a time and relying only on himself.

George is practical and independent to a fault. Though his way has rendered him successful in his professional life, his personal life has gone unfulfilled, that is, until he meets Cocoa. Once she enters his life George is challenged to become less rigid and more flexible. George and Cocoa officially meet when she enters his firm to inquire about an advertised job, but they encounter each other earlier in the day at a coffee shop not too far from the firm.

For the first time in his life George is considering the possibility of spiritual connections, mystical alliances, that defy explanations and logical conclusions. However, duly shaken by such novel realizations, George concludes that any future interactions with Cocoa would be unwise and decides, therefore, to deny her the job.

Cocoa also changes as a result of her marriage to George. Because she is an only child, and because she was raised by her grandmother, Miss Abigail, who feels a particular obligation to make this parentless child happy, Cocoa is somewhat spoiled and self-centered, though not in an irredeemable way. Consequently, Cocoa has developed into an independent woman, exemplified in the fact that she has left her southern home and has made a life for herself in New York.

Still, when she and George begin dating, she deliberately tests him for no reason other than to play childish games. She insists that he prove over and over again his love for her. George is passionate about sports, especially professional football.

During the season, his only request is that Monday nights be honored as his television night. However, Cocoa complains that if he loves her, he would be willing to forgo those nights every so often. But when George presses her on the issue and asks if she has some specific request for a Monday night out, Cocoa demurs. George then gets angry and accuses Cocoa of being insensitive, stating that she evidently wants to torture him for the mere sake of torture, because if she truly has no specific need on a Monday night, why must they engage in a needless hypothetical discussion.

At one point during the courtship George considers purchasing a VCR so that he can record the Monday-night games but then decides not to, thinking instead that if he and Cocoa are to have a future, she will have to accept some aspects of his life.

Ultimately, Cocoa will compromise, and for the first four years of their marriage, she accepts the fact that she and George will take separate vacations, when he insists on attending the annual Super Bowl games. Mama Day is certain that there must be something special about this new boyfriend, because George is the first man whom Cocoa has introduced to her family, even via letter.

That is why it is significant that they narrate the bulk of the novel. Each is writing to the other in an effort to record all of those feelings, anxieties, frustrations, and joys that punctuated their life together. He relinquishes his life for hers; and she, in compensation for that sacrifice, honors him not only by naming her second son George but also by documenting his life and by acknowledging his continued impact on her, even fourteen years after his death.

As title character and as matriarch of the Days, Mama Day serves as foundational character for the entire novel. She is an integral part of all that affects Cocoa. Nevertheless, Mama Day urges Cocoa to write to the firm, thank them for their consideration, and inform them that she is still interested in employment.

Though Cocoa thinks this will do no good, she, at least in her estimation, humors Mama Day and writes. Completing the task, Cocoa gives the letter to Mama Day who insists on mailing it herself.

Upon receiving the letter George admits that he had almost forgotten about Cocoa, and when he opens the envelope he notices a fine powder has been sprinkled inside. Unable to identify what it is, George finds himself reluctant to brush it away.

It is obvious that Mama Day sprinkled the mysterious powder in the envelope. From the very beginning of the novel Mama Day is presented as a forceful woman who perhaps possesses supernatural powers. Even Dr.

That Dr. Smithfield admires Mama Day adds credibility to her practice, even though she needs no such validation. Because she believes in the primacy of, and has witnessed the success of, natural cures, Mama Day feels obliged to offer her services whenever they are requested. And since she takes her job seriously, she absolutely refuses to be compared to the likes of Dr.

Soon after George arrives with Cocoa in Willow Springs, he meets up with Buzzard, who proudly informs him that Mama Day is a bit jealous of the competition he offers to her practice, that they have a little professional rivalry afoot. Clearly, Mama Day thinks that Buzzard somehow diminishes her efforts in doing legitimate work.

Any practice that smacks of voodoo Mama Day disdains, and she would never identify herself as such. Still, when Cocoa suffers her debilitating illness at the hands of Ruby, the extremely jealous practitioner of the occult and victim of low self-esteem, Mama Day realizes that she must battle this adversity in kind. Calling upon all the fortitude she can muster from the other place, Mama Day connects the rational world with the mystical world when she asks George to honor the promise he made to Cocoa in the rational world, but to do so by obeying the rules of Willow Springs.

Of course, in order to do so, he must suspend his rational beliefs from the outside world. Though the ritual that Mama Day insists he perform may seem ludicrous and ill-fated, he must execute the task. As the voice of reason and promise which entails hope and having faith in the unknown , Mama Day, in fact, must bridge these two worlds.

As a vital figure in the novel, she remains consistent throughout, believing in the possibilities of a better day even when circumstances seem to indicate otherwise. While Mama Day has been responsible for providing Cocoa with discipline, Abigail has been the source of comfort and encouragement, most often coddling and spoiling her granddaughter.