Everyday Use By Alice Walker Essay

Relationships between family members can be incredibly troublesome. Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” are two short stories which show striking similarities when it comes to family relationships between characters, but they differ a great deal in setting and socioeconomic status. These stories feature girls who struggle in relationships with their mother and sister. Dee, from “Everyday Use” and Connie, from “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” are young women who share a similar character identity. Their issues strongly mirror each other when it comes to personality traits and identification as a member of the family, despite the drastic differences in culture and context.

I am choosing “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker and “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin to compare. I chose these two because both are about familial relationships, although one is about a mother/daughter bond and the other is about siblings. In addition, I wanted to delve beyond the familial theme and into the theme of personal identity vs cultural identity, in which both short stories provide similar yet different examples of this topic. I am also exploring how culture and tradition tie into the personal vs cultural identity theme. To begin, Walker uses symbolism and irony to show how the narrator displays her cultural identity compared to her daughter, Dee

An internal conflict arises between the father and the mother as they have different perspectives on how their children need to live their lives. The narrow-minded mother believes that the tradition

In the short story called “Everyday Use,” by Alice Walker, the mother daughter conflict theme is portrayed throughout the whole story. The oldest daughter Dee constantly believes that she is better than the rest of the family causing a family feud about who gets the cherished quilt. Dee has always been on a pedestal over her family and she soon finds out that it is no longer the case. Once she finds this out conflict arises. The biggest conflict lies between Mama and Dee. This is clearly illustrated by Dee’s high standards, selfish behavior, and lack of knowledge about her family’s heritage.

Have you every heard of a book called “Everyday use”.Its made by an excellent artist named Alice Walker.Its a story about 2 sisters,Dee and Maggie.Dee is the oldest and she went to college to learn more about her culture,Maggie is the younger one seen as the dumb and shy one in story,and she is helping to make a new life with their mom after their last house burnt down.My family and the family in everyday use share similarities and differences when it comes to respect,being spoiled,and strength of mothers.

“Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, is a story of a black family composed of a mother and her two daughters: Maggie and Dee. Walker does an excellent job illustrating her characters. There are all types of characters in this short story from round to static. Dee is a flat character, yet Walker uses Dee’s character to warn people of what might happen if they do not live properly. Walker describes Dee’s character as arrogant and selfish, and through Dee’s character one is allowed to perceive the wicked effect of an egotistical world.

A Comparison Of My Family and “Everyday Use” “Everyday Use” is a story about a mother and her two daughters, Dee and Maggie, one daughter is greedy and mean the other is shy and nice. The magnificent author of this wonderful book is Alice Walker, she has written other titles like “The Color Purple” and “The Temple of My Familiar.” Everyday Use can relate to me since my family does argue and my older sister is sort of like Dee. As for everything that I have read in her work, not everything can relate to your typical family. But how do their meanings of heritage differ from our own?

Sometimes it is so easy to forget where you came from. “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker is a story written about an African American family during the 1970’s. The family faces several obstacles in life that causes an abundant amount of tension. The two siblings, Dee and Maggie, have a sibling rivalry caused by the difference in circumstances in which they both currently live in. Maggie has scars from a fire that occurred as the were kids. This along with the fact that Dee was able to become more successful in live creates jealousy between the two. Their mother was never the most educated or feminine woman. Even though this family faced these problems in the 70’s I can still relate to them today. My household has also faced sibling rivalries, children being unappreciative, as well as personal insecurities.

Divides within families emerge as result of several factors, leading to familial misreadings among members, ultimately resulting in a superimposed misinterpretation over families, damaging relationships. In “To Da-Duh, In Memorium” by Paule Marshall, the cultural differences, a lack of familiarity and lack of faith in the other’s world and its values, and age difference cause the narrator and the character Da-Duh (the narrator’s grandmother) to misread one another, undermining their relationship. The narrator and Da-Duh had cultural divisions that undermined their familial ties and bond. The cultural divisions illustrated differences between the narrator’s way of life in New York and Da-Duh’s life in Barbados.

Dee likes to do her things with other people, and have fun at the same time. She really do likes to be opposite of her family she went and changed her name and said “No,mama,” she say . “Not Dee , ‘ Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo .” In the stories “two kinds “ and “everyday use “ they both make a good example of family making an influence on one’s perspective of their culture.

In every home, there is a different definition of family and how family should treat each other. Two short stories were read by an author named Flannery O’Connor. “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. It was about a dysfunctional family who encounters a criminal named “The Misfit”. The grandmother which is the main character is very judgmental towards others and sometimes her own family at times. This story starts off with a disagreement on where to go for a family trip, but they decide on going to Florida for the family trip after a while of arguing. On this trip, it showed what type of family they are. They talk about everything with one another as well as bicker and fight but at the end of the day, they are still family and love each other. They come together the most in panicking situations such as the accident and waiting for a car to help them. The point of this paper is the theme of family. Specifically, family is a theme in this short story because it depicts a dysfunctional family; the family you see on a crazy television show and can’t get enough of because they’re funny but also they have serious moments. There 's the two troublesome and annoying kids, the hot-headed dad who tries to maintain control of a situation and fails, the wife busy attending to the baby, and the grandmother, who 's a case all to herself (and also the main character). Though the story starts out seeming like a comedy, it takes a serious turn when the family encounters a criminal, who kills them

In "Everyday Use," Alice Walker stresses the importance of heritage. She employs various ways to reveal many aspects of heritage that are otherwise hard to be noticed.

Dee?s character in the story is a direct relation to any number of people in society that do not know or are confused about their heritage. She is struggling to create an identity for herself, and is confused as to what it encompasses. She grasps at African tradition and culture, yet fails to acknowledge her own African American culture. This happened all over America, particularly in the North, in the 1960?s, following the civil rights movement. Dee is misconstruing her heritage as material goods, as opposed to her ancestor?s habits and way of life. This may be due in part to her leaving her hometown and becoming an educated, sophisticated young woman. Dee?s direct heritage is that of African Americans.

Dee on the other hand, represents more of a modern, complex, materialistic way of life. She moves to the city to become educated. She is ashamed of where she comes from. In a letter mama receives, Dee writes “no matter where we ‘choose’ to live, she will manage to come see us” (Walker 281). Furthermore, when she comes home to visit she tells mama that she has changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo because “I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me” (Walker 282).