Furthermore, Sarnowski acknowledges mother’s disappointment as Maggie gives up the quilts, pointing out that they represent memories of family members. The author believes that displaying these quilts will disintegrate the sense of family history they carry. Consequently,
After it all comes together, the fully constructed quilt is a representation of all of the cultures she is put together in one. Along with this, in the short story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, the grandmother of two sisters is an avid quilt-maker, who creates quilts out of pieces of clothing from her past. The amalgamation of these pieces of cloth shows how the small pieces put together create one single culture. Again, the quilt is a metaphor for the grandmothers past making her the person she is
The quilt’s variety of colours conveys a link between the narrator’s multicultural family as well background. This idea is conveyed in lines fifteen through seventeen, “Six Van Dyke brown squares.. Mama’s cheeks.” Additionally, the colours of the quilt also play a role in being symbolism of the narrator’s family characteristics and love, such as in lines thirty-nine through forty, “of my father’s burnt umber pride, my mother’s ochre gentleness.” This concept is further presented in lines twenty-five and twenty-six, “Among her yellow sisters, their grandfather’s white family.”
In Alice Walkers “ Everyday Use” there is reference to quilts. It is made very clear that these quilts are a symbol of the families heritage. The quilts had been hand made by the Narrartor Mrs Johnson, Mrs. Johnsons Sister, and Mother. The quilts where sewn from old clothes worn by many generations of the family.
This shows, unlike her sister Maggie, Dee’s perception of the quilts are strictly aesthetic and artistic pieces that reflect African Heritage. Dee never considers they may represent oppression themselves and it makes her seem as though she wants them solely just to show off. In addition, Ross goes on to state, “Her admiration for them now seems to reflect a cultural trend toward valuing handmade objects, rather than any sincere interest in her “heritage.” After all, when she was offered a quilt before she went away to college, she rejected it as “old-fashioned, out of style” (Ross 1-2).
“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.
Importantly, the quilts which Mama promised Maggie on her marriage were highly symbolic, representing the Mama's heritage of the past. The quilt was very significant thing in a way that it represented history; it included clothes that Dee's great grandma was wearing and pieces of grandpa uniforms that he used to wear during the civil war times. The guilt also signifies the experiences of Negro American civil war; as Walker indicated the importance of civil war legacies in her story. The quilt also complements to the idea of creative activities, which women created during generational lineages.
The Symbolism of Quilts in Everyday Use Alice Walker’s 1973 short story, Everyday Use, is about a rivalry between a mother and her daughter, and how they have a complicated relationship in regards to their heritage. The two characters named Mama who narrates the story and Dee who was the annoying, selfish one have a complex relationship. The issues both of them had was that Dee cares about her life and being smarter than caring about her family, and Mama became upset. Mama with the help of her sister, and mother has decided to create clothing called quilts. The quilts were handmade, used for bedding, and portrayed the artistry of the family.
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).
Mama sees that is a part of her heritage as well and wants the quilt to belong to her daughters, that she loves so much. But she would want the quilt to belong to one person that would treasure the quilt as much as she did and the rest of her descendants did. Alice Walker illustrates the differing views and wants the audience to see how much the quilt means and how much heritage and family should mean an individual whether they have "left the nest" or not. Alice Walker wants the audience to side with Maggie and Mama as the two of them value their family and the family valuable that Dee only sees as a trend statement or a new trend in her generation. The title, "Everyday Use", is important to the story as to how the quilt is seen for the characters and how the writer wants the reader to see it as well.
In the short story” Everyday Use” by Alice Walker who tells a story about black women who have two daughters Maggie and Dee. She has to have the decision to give the quilts of one of her two daughters. Dee her oldest daughter who has been away at college and comes to visit her family and she wants the quilts as popular fashion and show them as part of their heritage. Maggie, her youngest daughter, who lives with her mother at home and understands the family tradition and heritage.her mother has been promised to give the quilts for her. The quilts mean for Maggie communication with family and culture.
Nowadays, child labor, indeed, has long been an international concern and poses a myriad of hindrances not only on economic growth, but also many fields in the near future. The industrial revolution was an era that an issue of child labor just started appearing on the surface. The workforce, in the course of Industrial Revolution, was in a soaring demand, as the number of factories proliferated day by day, and as urban areas got industrialized, families promptly migrated from the rural farm areas to the newly industrialized urban areas for the sake of jobs. Because surviving in a city required a great deal of money, the households were forced to send their children to work, which led to a surging increment on the rate of child labor in factories.
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.
It was December 2014 at Westpark Springs Behavioral Hospital and as a newfound Psychiatric Technician, I was entrenched in the physical embodiments of human minds deemed too darkened and damaged to co-exist with the rest of society. Rounding on my last patient of the day, I opened the stainless steel door to the room occupied by Mr. Robinson; a man plagued by a life-time of violent psychosis and commanding voices who was ultimately deemed “incurable” by medical doctors. To my amazement, I found him speaking calmly and coherently to the Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner, expressing that the harrowing voices that had tormented him for years seemed to have subsided. Over the next hour, we learned that Mr. Robinson had benefited tremendously from the advanced practice nursing model of care that focused on biopsychosocial and evidence-based approaches as
Having done so, she goes on to highlight the ‘womanist’ culture. Afro-American tradition, for Mama, is symbolized by churn. It is a tradition of bonding, of mutual nurturance. Similarly, the symbol of quilt for Mama is not just a utilitarian item but a living tradition. Alice Walker, in fact, uses the imagery of the quilt to suggest what womanism is all about.
