Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" is the story of a woman, referred to as Mama, and her two daughters, Maggie and Dee. Mama and Maggie live together in their small home in a rural area. Dee has gone to college in a big city and is coming for a visit. Maggie is painfully self conscious, "chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle" with scars on her body from a house fire. Dee has always been scornful of her family's simple way of living and has been greatly influenced by her time away. Walker uses Maggie to explore the ideas of a family's heritage and history and, by contrasting her with Dee, voices a concern that in our search for our roots perhaps we are losing important aspects of our heritage.…
In the short story, "Everyday Use," Alice Walker teaches us lessons on true inheritance; what it is and who can receive it. Two hand stitched quilts become the center of conflict in the story. They are also used to symbolize the true inheritance. Like a quilt, a person's world view is made up of events, circumstances and influences that shape how they see and respond to the world. "Everyday Use" is a story of two worlds in conflict. Mama, acting as the narrator, guides us through the interaction of the two very different worlds embodied in her daughters.…
The theme of “Everyday Use” (1973), by Eudora Welty, is the impact of the past on the present. Mama Johnson and her daughter Maggie await the arrival of the older daughter, Dee. Mama Johnson recalls the various allowances she provided for Dee. Dee receives a formal education and the finer clothes she prefers to wear, unlike Mama Johnson and Maggie. Dee has two fundamental issues. Her family embarrasses her, and she is accustomed to getting her way, although Dee is never satisfied. She has high ideals, while Mama Johnson and Maggie are simpler people. Mama Johnson recalls a time when Dee “used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks’ habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant…
In “Everyday Use” Dee was mamas daughter that was never satisfied. She had always been favored by everyone based on her looks and her whit’s compared to her sister Maggie. Dee felt like no one should tell her no. she knew her mother wouldn’t stop her from getting her way.…
Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" is a short story about the clash between a mother and daughter. Dee is the child returning home to visit. The visit is not exactly pleasant and ends after a stand-off between her and Mama. Many readers see Mama as finally standing up for her own ideals while also refusing to conform to the rules Dee wishes her to follow. Dee follows different rules of society and religion than her mother does in order to become her own person. The rules Dee follows are shallow compared to the old-fashioned ways of her mother.…
While Miss Brill in “Miss Brill”, Dee and Mama in “Everyday Use”, and Marji in “Persepolis,” are women of different cultures and ethnicities, their roles as women is faced with similar gender inequalities. Some might argue that women are treated as an equal gender with the same amount of opportunity as men. However, Miss Brill, Dee, Mama and Marji share in common psychological, social, and economic issues that women face not only exist today in America, but also Worldwide.…
“Everyday Use” is told from the perspective of Mama and takes place deep in the South sometime around the 1960’s. It is about a hard-working mother and her two daughters Dee and Maggie, and how she had to give each of them different paths to follow in life. Dee is the older sister. These paths both demonstrate how their heritage plays a role in their everyday lives. These routes resulted in Maggie having a better relationship with Mama than Dee had with her.…
Dee is a force in the family, but she is arrogant and condescending towards Mama and her sister. Dee, too, is full of resentment about everything. She hates the way she grew up. She hates their family home. She hates that her mother was more like a man than a woman. She hates that Mama and Maggie aren't as smart and "stylish" as her. Yet, when Dee becomes captivated by the “Back to Africa” movement, suddenly her family's own heritage becomes something popular rather than a source of embarrassment. She returns home demanding the family quilts not for sentimental reasons, but because they now considered “special” and is shocked when Mama denies her of them. Dee's potential narration would be a delusional one, as even she with her self-confidence denies her connection to her family, is swayed by society's views of culture and popularity and even takes on her own new persona as Wangero.…
Walker finds her voice through her homelife as a child and what she had to overcome. (Cummings 1). Even though Maggie, Dee, and Mama lived through poverty, they did not have to be “Born into a world marked by racism, sexism, and poverty” as the article “Alice Walker” describes (Cummings 1). In the short story, Maggie and Dee were able to go to school to learn skills such as reading unlike Mama (Walker 21). Walker experienced school, she just had to overcome different more severe obstacles. In the short story “Everyday Use,” Mama has two daughters who develop conflict with the family quilts and who will receive them, although in reality, Walker has at least seven children. Walker may have changed the gender of the children to give a more realistic outlook to her stories because boys are not going to fight over the quilt as much as Dee was over Maggie because they won’t see as much value in them as the sisters did. A newspaper article explains, “Walker stresses not only the importance of language but also the destructive effects of its misuse” (Tuten 125). Along with language, Walker stresses heritage and culture in her short story “Everyday Use” through her use of the quilts from her ancestors. Through Walker’s writings, and her personal experiences and life, there are many differences throughout both of…
In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” Mama, the narrator of the story, is rather distant with her daughter Dee and dreams about reconciling with her on a television show. Specifically, she imagines Dee expressing gratitude for all that she has done for her, while embracing her (Mama) “with tears in her eyes (Walker 315).” It is obvious that Mama doesn’t understand her daughter’s life choice to adopt an African lifestyle and feels that Dee is rejecting her origins and family. Furthermore, the reader can see that Mama has a troublesome relationship with Dee by the amount of tension between them. This strained relationship becomes clear when Dee “went to the trunk at the foot of (Mama’s) bed and started rifling through it (Walker 320).” The narrator…
Have you ever not seen eye to eye with your mother? In Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use”, we are shown how many of the choices we make and the things we value create our identity. This story focuses on two characters, mama and her daughter Dee (Wangero), who struggle to see the same way about their heritage. Dee wants the things made by her grandmother, to not admire it as an artifact, but rather to remake it. She wants to take them, and change them to match her lifestyle as it is today. She loves them for the way they look. Mama, on the other hand, views the things from her mother as artifacts. She loves the items more than how they look. She admires the quilts because of their everyday use. Transformations take place between these characters. Dee’s transformation is more external than it is internal. She shows her transformation in the way she speaks, the clothes she wears, and her judgement. Mama’s transformation is more internal. She begins to see Dee’s real thoughts, and she stands up against her. When she takes the quilts away from Dee, she doesn’t only stand up for herself, but Maggie, as…
Through contrasting family members and views in "Everyday Use", Alice Walker illustrates the importance of understanding our present life in relation to the traditions of our own people and culture. Using careful descriptions and attitudes, Walker demonstrates which factors contribute to the values of one's heritage and culture; she illustrates that these are represented not by the possession of objects or mere appearances, but by one's lifestyle and attitude. In "Everyday Use" Walker personifies the different sides of culture and heritage in the characters of Dee and the mother (the narrator). Dee can be seen to represent a materialistic, complex, and modern way of life where culture and heritage are to be valued only for…
The short story “Everyday Use”, by Alice walker, begins with a family of three: Maggie, Dee, and “Mama”(there mother). The author never reveals her actual name. However Dee being old enough to attend college leaves off to college. When she comes back from college, she begins to express herself in different ways, a way that is more liberal. By the authors description she is dressed differently, she talks differently, she even changed her name to Wangero. However she starts gathering things that her mother and her sister, Maggie, owned to express her heritage, she has the wrong idea of heritage, her heritage lied in her own name passed from her grandmother to her aunt to her. the name that she carried, Dee, was passed along for three generations, which she didn’t realize. The author shows symbolism and point of view throughout the story through the family’s name,Dee, the quilt, the house, and the mother explains the story where the author uses point of view. The objects that make Dee the person she is, are disrespectful, selfish, and self-centered.…
In “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker depicts the protagonist, Dee as a selfish, African girl who turned her back on her family and…
Everyday Use, a short story written by Alice Walker, brings the reader into the lives of a mother and her two daughters. The daughters grew up in the same home but had two very different paths. Mama and the church raised money for Dee to attend school in Augusta and Maggie stayed home. Although Dee went on to further her education in Augusta, Maggie learned other valuable life skills from Mama, her Aunt, and her grandmother. These differences growing up give both Maggie and Dee different views of where they came from, where they are now, and the direction of their future.…