Alice Walker Literary Devices

“Everyday Use” by Alice Walker is a short story containing a first-person point of view, narrated by the mother in the story. “The mother” is not named in the story, yet holds an important role in being the protagonist while also incorporating vital details of the characters’ emotions, views, and ideas of each other. The narrator tells the audience everything she knows about the other two main characters, giving the audience insight on how to view these characters in the story. Walker does a great job using two specific literary elements in “Everyday Use” to pinpoint the story’s theme. In “Everyday Use”, Walker develops the theme of the importance of Christ-like behavior by unifying these literary elements: point of view and characterization. The first literary element that Walker specifies in order

Walker establishes imagery through the first-person point of view, as the narrator is stating details about the yard and the house as if the audience were watching a play or a movie. The theme is being set up by this imagery of the calming presence among the house as if the Holy Spirit were sitting with them right in that yard. The mother progresses by giving insight on how Maggie will feel when her older sister, Dee, arrives for a visit, saying Maggie will be nervous until she leaves. The mother provides understanding on how Maggie views her sister Dee: “She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that “no” is a word the world never learned to say to her” (147). Reading these details about Dee’s personality creates suspense for the audience and information that readers need to remember for later on in the text in regards to analyzing the theme. The mother is incorporating her own