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Everyday Use By Alice Walker

706 Words3 Pages

This short story, Everyday Use, by Alice Walker, shows the importance of religion and traditional heritage. Mama is a woman of God, in which God is an active part of her day-to-day life. She has a deep connection with God which provides a conclusion to the life around her and a guiding force that helps her navigate life's challenges. Her faith is closely tied to her understanding of heritage and culture, and she often draws on religious imagery and metaphors to describe her connection to her family's history. Mama describes her relationship with her ancestors as a "thin thread" that connects her to her past, and she sees her faith as a way to strengthen that thread and keep it from breaking.

Maggie, one of mama’s daughters, religion is also …show more content…

She sees herself as an educated woman disconnected from her past and heritage. Dee's rejection of her family's faith is correlated to her rejection of their culture and traditions. She sees her family's way of life as outdated and wants to distance herself from it to create a new identity. Dee's actions show the opposite of a Christ-led heart. While Maggie's knowledge of her family background offers her a connection to her heritage, She appreciates and holds close to her heart the quilts she’s been promised, but when Dee asks for them, she cannot conceal her …show more content…

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. This decision is significant because it demonstrates Mama and Maggie's belief that their religious and cultural practices are not mere artifacts to be displayed or admired, but rather meaningful practices that are woven into their everyday lives and

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Dee (Wangero) is depicted as a meticulous person. This is seen through her particular care about how she would treat the quilts, accusing her sister of being, “... backwards enough to put them to everyday use.” She accuses her sister of not knowing how to properly care for such delicate and precious items, saying that under her sister’s care, the quilts would, “...be in rags.” This shows that Dee (Wangero) tries to convince her mother to give her the quilts through degrading. She makes her sister and her

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Mama would fantasize about Dee and her on the Johnny Carson TV show where she pins an orchid on her and the nervous girls who never laughed mentioned in the beginning of the story. Conversely, when Mama talked about Maggie’s future or plans, she appears disappointed. This is seen when Mama mentions Maggie’s fiancé, Mama said, “Maggie will marry John Thompson who has mossy teeth in an earnest face”. Mama talked more highly of Dee’s future than Maggie’s. Initially, Mama even admires Dee’s African dress.

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Rather than serving as a symbol of identity like Maggie and her mother do, Dee chooses to see the quilt as a cultural identity, away from family history. This makes the quilt significant because it serves as a connection between Dee’s family’s past and the present, connecting to her values and beliefs in the

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Maggie uses the quilts to honor their memory because she and her mother view the quilts for daily use. On the other hand, Dee’s view on culture is seldomly influenced by her experiences. This is because when the house burnt down Dee watched it be engulfed with flames, and she hated the house so much she could care less if it burnt down. Dee detests everything about her family’s culture. One way she despised it was by finding the meaning of her culture that does not relate to her family.

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She deliberately avoids her and her new sense of self-righteousness. Maggie's lack of exposure to society makes her weak in her sister's eyes and vulnerable to her sister's pretentious attitude toward what is owed to Maggie. Dee disturbs the peace by proclaiming, "Maggie can't appreciate these quilts!” It is clear that Dee believes that she deserves to receive whatever she wants, yet Maggie never fights for what she is already entitled

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Sarnowski describes Maggie by stating, “She ekes out an existence on the family farm and has neither the intelligence nor the physical attributes of Dee/Wangero” (Sarnowski 278). This statement shows that Maggie lives a conservative type of farm life, and due to this lifestyle, she is less intelligent than her sister. This statement also shows how the character Maggie is described in a sense as inferior to Dee because of her lack of education and physical attributes. Maggie’s traditionalist ways show, however, when she tells her mother, “"She can have them, Mama,” … "I can 'member Grandma Dee without the quilts"” (Walker 6).

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“Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts! She said. “she’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.” (walker). This shows that dee really wants the quilts but not for the reason her mother wants.

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Dee says, "‘you just don’t understand. " Mama says, "What don’t I understand?" and Dee replies, "Your heritage" (6). After Mama gives the quilts to Maggie, Dee gets mad and says that they don’t understand their heritage. Dee says that their lives will not become anything if they stay where they are. "You ought to make something of yourself, too, Maggie.

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This new outlook on her life caused Dee to place different values on the items with which she had grown up. She wanted to take the items as things to put on display like art hanging on a wall. Dee even wanted the cherished quilts to “hang them” (Walker, 1973) instead of using them as blankets. As she saw it, to use the quilts for their original purpose would destroy them, or as she said, “Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they 'd be in rags” (Walker, 1973).

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With determined ambitions and education resulted in a lack of sensibility in heritage, history, and self identity, which only family can implement. Dee presents herself almost as a weird, intimidating individual foreign to what her family has ever known. The conflict that Mama and Maggie are confronted with is that Dee is does not care about anything but herself. When being rejected to have possession of the quilts Dee stated “But they’re priceless! She was saying now, furiously; for she has a temper.”.

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The story goes beyond these traits to deal mainly with the way in which the two sisters value their heritage. Maggie knows nothing but her heritage, for she has never left home. On the other hand, Dee seems to have

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To Mama and Maggie, they represent more than that. They are

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Throughout the story Mama describes both of the girls and how she feels about their differences, even though they are sisters and grew up in the same house. Maggie and Dee are different in their

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