The Watch and Livvie :: Literature Control Essays

The Watch and Livvie Solomon's silver watch contained multifaceted significance with regard to his character and it's effect on Livvie--it represented prestige and wealth, control and obsession, and a life of dark retreat. For Solomon the watch represented the prestige and wealth that were rarely attained by colored people. "For he was a colored man that owned his land and had it written down in the courthouse." (P. 85) Yet 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 about "He might be dreaming of what time it was, for even through his sleep 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 planted 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 impact on Livvie. She lived in a sheltered world--a world she did not see. She saw 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 heart 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 shamed the old man with her humbleness and delight?