To hell with death as autobiographyWhen you read a novel, you may start to wonder how much of a gap there is between the story the narrator is telling and the actual events that happened. make the author decide to write the story. In Alice Walker's "To Hell With Dying" you could say that this story is fundamentally autobiographical. Although some people may have thought that "To Hell With Dying" was completely fiction, evidence from history and other sources suggests otherwise. The love the narrator feels towards Mr. Sweet parallels real events that took place in Alice Walker's life. In the foreword of Donna Haisty Winchell's book Alice Walker, it is revealed that Alice Walker was "blinded in one eye at the age of eight by negligence." shot from a brother's BB gun" (ix). The shot left a scar that bothered Walker immensely. Winchell also writes that because of the BB bullet wound Walker "felt ugly and outcast" (ix). This description of Walker's incident creates an image of a young girl who has no sense of self-worth. In the story, however, Mr. Sweet is very fond of the narrator. He called her "his princess" and "made her feel simply outrageously devastating to the dazzling age of eight and a half" (1144). Perhaps this description of how Mr. Sweet makes the narrator feel symbolizes how Alice Walker felt about Mr. Sweet in real life. Alice Walker was eight years old when they shot her with the BB gun, and the narrator is eight and a half when Mr. Sweet tells her how cute she is. Although Alice Walker has only vague memories of the real Mr. Sweet, she remembers that he never stopped talking about the things that he they were disturbing. Mr. Sweet's talking and singing made Walker feel good. In Walker... center of paper... he too is an artist. Walker explains in Alice Walker. “Love happened, and that is the essence of the story” (qtd. in Winchell, 12). Walker wrote "To Hell With Dying" to thank Mr. Sweet for the contributions he made to his life. Winchell acknowledges that "the story represents his [Walker's] desire to be able to return the favor" (13). Works Cited Walker, Alice. "Remembering Mr. Sweet." The Harper Fiction Anthology. Ed. Silvano Barnet. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.Walker, Alice. "To hell with death." The Harper Fiction Anthology. Ed. Silvano Barnet. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991. Winchell, Donna Haisty. Alice Walker. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992. Works consultedCriticism of short stories. vol. 5. Detroit: Gale Publishers, 1990. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 46, 58. Detroit: Gale Publishers, 1990.