ipl-logo

Everyday Use And Good Country People Summary

596 Words3 Pages

Everyday Use and Good Country People are short stories with similar themes, can an attitude from one of daughters have an affect on both the mother and daughter’s life. Both Dee and Hulga change their names in order to prove a point . Joy changed her name as a tool to rebel against her mother, Mrs Hopewell while Dee changed her name to express to both Maggie and her mother a new culture. Making Dee’s mother as a rejection towards her identity and heritage. Both relationships between mother and daughter expresses the daughter as being insubordinate. Creating the question was a way to help me understand the message throughout the story and to reframe the tensions and connections between mother and daughter. Rereading the text with the question in mind helped me understand that both Joy and Dee see their mother as an unsophisticated knowledgeable person. I noticed both daughters feel superior to everyone else, causing the conflict in the stories. However Rachel Pietka explains within the article Good country people" unmasked: Hulga's journey to salvation that Hulga bases her identity on self-aggrandized superiority towards …show more content…

Flight: A Re-Evaluation of Dee in Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use. Dee has inherited her stubbornness and self determination from her mother. Dee’s mother triumph is achieved because she is able to attain a balance between heritage in both of her daughters. Maggies respect for tradition and Dee’s refusal to back down. My thoughts shift into a perspective that Dee’s ways has lead the true colors of her mother to shine. Dee is an actual representation of her mother. Which leads me to believe that an action of Dee becomes an effect towards the mother. When Dee explained to her mother that she would take the quilts and portray them in a museum, the mother got up snatched the quilts, using the same attitude Dee uses towards

Show More
Related

Everyday Use Maggie Character Analysis

637 Words | 3 Pages

In the first paragraph, it is already stated that the world had never learned to say no to Dee (46): her mother especially. Dee wants a dress for graduation; Mama buys it for her (49). She wants Mama’s butter churn; she obtains that too (53). Compared to Maggie, Dee is much more fashionable. She wants to use the ancient quilts, steeped in family heritage, to be put on display instead of using them as the blankets that they are (55).

Read More

Quilts By Teresa Palomo Acosta And Everyday Use By Alice Walker

558 Words | 3 Pages

Alice showcases the amount of Dee’s insolence when Dee returns a completely different person, impesizing this on pages 61 and 62 when Dee introduces herself as “Wangero leewanika Kemanjo” stating that “Dee is dead, I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after those who oppress me” these lines express just how rude and ignorant dee is when it comes to her family. She uses “oppress “as if her mother has ruled over her unfairly with strict authority even though this is not the case. The mother obviously cares a great deal about Dee and respects her daughter’s choices, even paying for her school and other things despite their financial difficulties. This story wills the reader to understand to respect family heritage, using the scene in which the mother Denys Dee the Quilts, the quilts she would not use or

Read More

Dee's Identity In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

721 Words | 3 Pages

Dee is a girl who lived with her mom and her sister Maggie, but she wasn’t like them at all, she was different than her sister and her mother. Mama was collecting money to take Dee to school in Augusta. Dee liked to be fashionable, she always wanted nice things. Dee changed allot in the story, she changed after she went to study in school.

Read More

Dee And Maggie In Alice Walker's Everyday Use

614 Words | 3 Pages

Dee has more advantages than Mama and Maggie both combined. Mama struggled so Dee could go to school in Augusta along with the financial help of the community. She oftentimes uses her interlet to intimidate others around her including her own family members. The short story states, “She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks’ habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice.” Maggie does not know as nearly as much as Dee.

Read More

Dee's Education In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

531 Words | 3 Pages

With her newfound intelligence came an air of superiority. She views her family as relics of the past who exist only to be catalogued. Walker shows this with the first action Dee takes upon arrival at her mother's home. She immediately takes a picture of the house with her family in the photo, but does not bother to ask her partner to take the photo for her to be in frame with her family; distancing them as mere

Read More

Character Relationships In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

794 Words | 4 Pages

When Dee came home she tried to take the quilts sewn by her grandmother but Mama finally told her no. She took the quilts and gave them to Maggie. After a careful analysis of the story, the reader understands how Mama’s feelings changed towards Dee, why her feelings changed, and how this change affects the story as a whole. Throughout the story Dees Mother’s feelings began to change as Dee began to see heritage differently than her and Maggie.

Read More

Everyday Use By Alice Walker Heritage Essay

1091 Words | 5 Pages

“Everyday Use By Alice Walker” Heritage is an important factor of, “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker. Given that that heritage is very important because it represents where people come from. It gives the reader an understanding of how people portray what heritage means and what it actually really means in the story. The family which represent the “concept of heritage as expressed by the Black political movements of the 60s”(Hoel, 1). Throughout the story the narrator's point of view, creates characters and setting which create theme and conflict between Dee and Mama.

Read More

Protagonist In Everyday Use

792 Words | 4 Pages

Character Analysis of the Protagonist in “Everyday Use” Like an onion, the protagonist (mom) in Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use” has many layers to her character. As a single parent the mom has to solely provide the necessities of life for her kids, being the only emotional support and dealing with daughters whom are both needing their mother’s wisdom. Her daughter Dee/Wangero, an exceptionally beautiful young woman blessed with “her feet …always neat-looking, as if God himself had shaped them with a certain style” (111), is having an identity crisis as well as being used to getting what she wants. These character traits of Dee/Wangero ultimately creates a conflict within the family dynamic. Maggie is the complete opposite of her sister, while Dee/Wangero is beautiful and smart, Maggie is disfigured and simple-minded.

Read More

Everyday Use By Alice Walker Analysis

830 Words | 4 Pages

The point of the quilts is to be of everyday use to their family. Just like Dee’s name that was passed down, and she changed, the quilts represent generations of their family history. Despite her poor education and lack of worldliness, especially compared to her daughter, it is Mama who is able to see just how shallow Dee’s motives really are. The quilt is a connection between generations that is supposed to be strong and, ideally,

Read More

Everyday Use Literary Analysis

1244 Words | 5 Pages

The quilts and other items are all useless to Dee. she sees them as objects that can be tossed aside or thrown out when desired. Dee wants to flash off the items to show her worth. Sam Whitsitt mentions, “Maggie and her mother represent ‘everyday use’ and keeping things at home, whereas Dee represents a false aesthetics which put things out of use…”. This is where the idea of identity comes through.

Read More

Everyday Use By Alice Walker

706 Words | 3 Pages

When Dee arrives at her family home, she is dismissive of her mother's home, referring to it as a shack, and is critical of her sister, Maggie's appearance. Even though her family has a rich cultural heritage rooted in their African American history, her mother and sister value their origin's practical and functional aspects. This attitude shows a lack of appreciation for the practical and functional aspects of her culture, which are just as important as the artistic aspects. The conflict between the sisters is ultimately resolved when Mama decides to give the quilts to Maggie, who plans to use them in her everyday life rather than keep them as a symbol of her cultural heritage.

Read More

Systemic Racism In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

339 Words | 2 Pages

In Everyday Use, Alice Walker illuminates systemic racism through one of the characters Dee. Dee does appreciate her heritage as her sister Maggie does. Dee dresses differently as it is described when she comes to visit her Mama from the college trip. Dee changed her name and her we realized she has changed. Your name is what represents who you are and by changing it you are changing your background.

Read More

Characterization In Everyday Use

610 Words | 3 Pages

(Nancy Tuten) agrees by saying, "Mama's distaste for Dee's egotism is tempered by her desire to be respected by her daughter.” The Mom’s character changes during the quilt scene, as she realizes that Maggie shares the appreciation of culture and heritage, and Dee's appreciation is entirely different from theirs. During the quilt scene, Dee is demanding Mom to give her the quilts, and Mom says, "when I looked at her like that something hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the soles of my feet.” In other words the daughter who she has always thought so highly of knew little of their culture and had little appreciation for their heritage. Walker creates the “mom” character to help defend her point, which is the importance of upholding the values and traditions in the African American

Read More

Influence Of Culture On Dee's Life

416 Words | 2 Pages

Dee has a dominant outgoing positive personality never takes NO for an answer is able to express herself and air her opinions with confidence. She tries to erase her background and her past and wants to progress in life without being handicapped by her ancestry. Yet in college she learns that culture and heritage going back a few generations is an added advantage to achieve success in life. On her visit to her mother and sister she wants to grab the best of the heirlooms as a showpiece only with no real emotional attachment to it. Her visit home is like a sandstorm in an oasis which disrupts the serene life of her mother and sister since she has now become a stranger to her own family.

Read More

Womanism In Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'

1029 Words | 5 Pages

This womanist conceptualization is shown by a nuanced destruction by Dee’s response to the quilt, which is the main metaphor in the story. A typical political rhetoric is represented in the character of Dee. This is a rhetoric which is more aggressive than mature, showier than subtle. Dee ends up in simplifying and commodifying culture, instead of relating it to any meaningful way. She comes out as a being who takes activism as a fad rather than a commitment.

Read More

More about Everyday Use And Good Country People Summary

Related Topics

Open Document