(Pg.57, lines 210-211) It is considered one of the main conflicts because of how valuable the quilts are to Maggie and
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.
Dee’s desire to use her family’s treasures as decorations rather than practical objects to be used every day is evidence of her mindset that her family heritage is a thing of the past and no longer relevant to her life. Conclusion The story “Everyday Use” highlighted the lack of respect and reverence that Dee had for her family and her heritage. During the time period in which the story was set, this concept was important in Southern African-American culture and to Dee’s family.
In “Everyday Use,” by Alice Walker the story brings a theme about sister rivalry. The two sisters, Maggie and Dee think differently about their culture, making them become apart from each other. Maggie is the shy and nervous sister while Dee is the confident and selfish sister. The quilt is what they valued different because it was a symbol for heritage for Dee ,but Maggie knows her heritage and she can remember it. The story makes the sister realizing their own self by having a conflict about the quilt.
The setting of Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” reveals important aspects about the family in many ways. Without the enriched setting provided to the reader by Walker, this story would have had no foundation on which to be built. The first way Walker uses setting to let the reader get to know the family is through the detailed description provided to the reader about the family home in paragraph one. Walker describes the family’s front yard as being an “extended living room” (Walker 417)
In “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, the meaning of heritage is admired differently by a family of the same background. Dee who now has an education and understands her heritage feud with Mama and Maggie who appreciate their heritage. Although they all come from the same household, their differences get in the way when it comes to the most valuable items in the house; including the churn and dasher that Mama and Maggie still use daily, the handmade quilts made by Grandma Dee, and how Dee is blinded by the truth of her own heritage. Dee wants the churn and dasher for decoration purposes only stating “I can use the churn top as a centerpiece for the alcove table,” (Walker 272.)
In Alice Walker 's’ short story “Everyday Use” she presents two different views on culture. The story is about Mrs. Johnson and her two daughters in Georgia during the early 1970’s. The story is narrated by Mrs. Johnson and describes a time when she must decide which daughter to give two family quilts to. Her oldest daughter, Dee, is visiting home from college and believes the quilts should be hung on the wall and preserved as a way to show off their culture to future generations. Maggie, the younger daughter, was promised the quilts when Dee originally turned down the quilts before she went to College.
“the quilts are the central symbol of the story representing the connectedness of history and intergenerational tries of the family” (“everyday use”). This means that the quilts mean heritage and remind the daughters of grand mom dee. The quilts are fought over at the end of the story because of the meaning of them. One daughter wants them for everyday use and one wants them just to have them because it means heritage to her. The mother at the end of the story agrees that they should be used for everyday use.
In her short story “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker describes the ways in which one can appreciate their heritage and how one method is greater than the other. She supports this idea through the use of 2 differing daughters, each demonstrating each type of appreciation as a means to argue her point. Her purpose is to convey that those who appreciate through use over appreciating though a glance appreciate their heritage more than those who view their past as a monument or memory of the past. As the story goes on, readers start to understand the differences between Wangero (originally named Dee compared to her younger sister Maggie.
The mother, Maggie, and Dee all have different views on their meaning of heritage. Dee seems more interested in material things, rather than having a true appreciation of her heritage and the value of the quilts. Maggie wants the quilts for sentimental value and as a representation of who she is and her past. She realizes the true value of the quilts, unlike Dee. In the story, Maggie states, “She can have them Mama, I can ‘member Grandma Dee without the quilts” (l77), meaning she understands her heritage and the value of the
We all come from different background. We all have a different story about our ancestors and heritage. In the short story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, Dee felt the need to go on a quest to embrace her roots. Dee’s actions symbolize that she wants to embrace her African culture. Dee does several things in order to connect with her roots by changing her appearance, changing her name, and wanting a family quilt.
In this imagery, the author uses hyperbole to describe how moving and gratified Mama feels about her daughter Maggie when she knows that her daughter likes to use those quilts. This imagery expresses Mama’s pride in her daughter’s identification with their own traditional culture. When Mama says she did something that she’ve never done before: she hugged her daughter Maggie. It shows her love to her daughter Maggie. This imagery is important.
In this story, Dee walks around the house and asks her mom to take certain priceless items that are part of her heritage. One of these items is some quilts that have been sewn with garments worn by relatives dating back to the Civil War. Dee desperately wants these quilts. After asking her mother if she can obtain them, her mother informs her that these quilts were already promised to her sister Maggie. Dee responds, “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!...
Mama, a “big boned woman with rough, man-working hands,” awaits her daughter’s (Dee) return in the literary piece Everyday Use (70). When returning home, Dee’s only mission was to ask for two specific quilts with hopes of hanging her heritage on display. Ordinarily Maggie, Dee’s sister, was once a bright, generous, young girl with abundant potential. Explicitly, one day, Maggie was damaged significantly in a fire in which transformed her entire life. The fire turned a once intelligent, social undeveloped girl into a terrified, hopeless juvenile, along with the failed assistance of her family.
As she looks at her quilts, Mama remembers that a certain patch came from her grandfather's paisley shirts, that some pieces came from dresses that Grandma Dee wore 50 years earlier, and even that there was a very small piece of her great-grandfather's Civil War uniform. From this, we can all see how and why they mean so much to her. To Dee, the quilts are a quaint "primitive" art. To Mama and Maggie, they represent more than that. They are family memories, very personal and very special mementos of loved ones who are gone.
