Everyday Use Imagery

Everyday Use, written by Alice Walker, portrays the relationship of a mother and her two daughters with the heritage “quilts”. By describing the Mama and her daughters Maggie and Dee’s views on the reservation and use of the quilts, the writer expresses that different people had different thoughts and concepts at that time and her love and praise for her own African culture. There are a lot of imagery in the text, which let the whole story more vivid and real. In Alice Walker’s Everyday Use, the writer uses first-person narration through various imagery from a mother’s perspective to help reader visualize the story. First, “Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up

Just like when I'm in church and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout. I did some.thing I never done before: hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room, snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero's hands and dumped them into Maggie's lap. Maggie just sat there on my bed with her mouth open. ”(page 6) This is a tactile imagery. 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. Because This plot is the climactic end of the story. Without this imagery, the readers won’t understand what the quilt means to Mama and Maggie. It helps readers to know and realize the them of this

At first, These imagery clearly divides the characters in the story into two types of people. One type is the people who keep following their traditionally African-American culture such as Mama and Maggie, and the other is the people who follow the mainstream which is a kind of fashion trend like Dee. Then, the writer implicitly discusses about the question of whether the quilts should be used or not. The imagery helps readers to understand this question and get the answer from the story. At the same time, the key item in the story “quilt” echoes the story title-Everyday Use. It is a symbol that represents the African culture. At last, the writer stands on the mother’s perspective to express her own opinion which is people should preserve their culture heritage appropriately. Above all, the imagery indeed helps readers to visualize the story and understand its meaning