Everyday Use By Alice Walker

“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.

Everyday Use is a short story written by Alice Walker as part of the story collection in the book Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. The short story is a powerful piece of writing that takes the reader on an insightful journey into the challenges, struggles, and realities of growing up as an African woman. The main issues that are palpable throughout the story are the issues of black consciousness and the stereotypes of rural black African women. I believe that the purpose of the text is to highlight the interconnectedness of the past and the present. The author wants the reader to appreciate the struggles and challenges that Black women faced

Alice Walker is a writer of many powerful short stories, novels, essays and poetry. She used her work to bring black women’s lives to the main focus, such as the rich and important in the US American Literature. In the short story “Everyday Use” written by Alice walker, she showed the conflicts and struggle throughout the African- American culture. “Everyday Use” addresses the dilemma with African Americans, trying to escape prejudice and poverty. The short story “Everyday Use” focuses on the encounter between a mother and her daughters. The setting of the story takes place in the driveway of the mother’s house. The mother and her youngest daughter Maggie wait for her oldest daughter Dee and her male friend to visit from school. Alice

In the story “Everyday Use” the author Alice Walker describes the family as being dysfunctional. The sisters Maggie and Dee despise each other. Mama feels as if she is not the way her daughters will like and or appreciate her. The mother adores both of her children, they all want the best for each other, but the relationship between Mama, Maggie, and Dee is flawed.

They everyday use of an item differs from person to person. There can be one item that has many uses or many items that has the same use. For example, a simple rubber band to most is simply a hair tie, but did you know it can also be used to make opening jars easier, tye dye eggs and shirts? It’s all about the way you see things. In the short story “everyday Use” by Alice Walker, it shows the difference of opinion two sisters can have based on the way they perceive themselves.

The conflict in the story is centered around the clash between the two worlds with which Walker 's character Dee is endued. Dee increasingly accuses her heritage of the ideas and rhetoric of the new Black Pride movement. Walker weaves the theme of African cultural nationalism with a descriptive conflict immersed in family issues. On another level, Alice Walker offers a unique look at the struggling African-American woman to find both a personality and voice from the shadows of the past, as well as a rapidly changing future. Everyday use continues to be included in the final anthologies of American literature.

In Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" Mama is the narrator. She speaks of her family of two daughters Maggie and Dee. Through the eyes of two daughters, Dee and Maggie, who have chosen to live their lives in very different manners, the reader can choose which character to identify most with by judging what is really important in one’s life. Throughout the story three themes consistently show. These themes show that the family is separated by shame, knowledge, and pride.

Heritage is defined as something that comes or belongs to one by reason of birth. In “Everyday Use”, by Alice Walker, the theme of the story can be considered as the meaning of heritage or even the power of education. Alice Walker uses many symbols and motifs such as the following: quilts, education, knowledge, Asalamalakim, and the renaming of Dee. In the story, African heritage and knowledge takes a major role.

People hold on to pieces of jewelry, furniture, and other symbolic collectables that is passed through generations. These things can remind a person of a loved one that is seen as being priceless.

Everyone defines and identifies themselves in different ways. Whether it’s by our names, our religion, or our sexuality, we all have something different that make us unique and that we identify ourselves as. In Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use,” an African American woman tells the story of her daughter Dee’s long awaited visit. Upon her arrival the mother and her other daughter, Maggie, discover some drastic changes in Dee: she has changed her name to Wangero, she also arrived with a mysterious man who calls himself Asalamalakim, and has adopted an African style of dress in order to depict what she sees as her heritage. During the course of her visit, Dee tries to take several items, important to her family’s heritage. “Everyday

The short story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker opens as the mother and her youngest daughter wait for the arrival of Dee, and a man who they think may be her husband. Growing up Dee had been contemptuous of her mother’s home and possessions, but now as she is older she embraces the way things used to be. This is especially true when she finds the two handmade quilts that were pieced together by her grandma and her aunt Big Dee. Even though the quilts were promised to Maggie for when she gets married, that doesn 't stop Dee from trying to take them. Although after Maggie is intimidated by Dee and says she can have them, her mother has a light bulb moment where she sees how Maggie is being forced to give up things that she shouldn 't have to because of her sister. Her mother then rips the quilts out of Dee 's hands and gives them back to Maggie, because that 's who they belonged to in the first place. Dee storms away with only a few parting words with Maggie. Maggie and the mother then spend the rest of the evening relaxing on the porch until it is time to go to bed. When Walker describes the two sisters and the interaction between the two sisters, she shows just how different the two girls are and just how much that affects their relationship between each other and their mother.

Most stories convey a form of message or meaning, and the short stories Everyday Use by Alice Walker, and The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien are no different. Everyday Use tells the story between a mother and her two daughters, who are living two completely lifestyles. One who now lives a more “modern lifestyle” and the other who is still living traditionally like the mother. In The Things They Carried the author recites stories about the time he spent in the Vietnam War, he also goes on to talk about the objects people carried with them into the war, either physical or mental. Both short stories attempt to tell captivating stories, though they are not without fault.

In the early 1970s, the Black Power movement was not only a political slogan against racism, but also an ideology that promoted racial pride and embraced the elements of the African culture. During this time, many African-Americans were encouraged to grow their hairs into afros, wear traditional African clothing, and reject their white slave names. In the story Everyday Use, Alice Walker presents a family with opposing views towards tradition and creates a character fooled by the Black Power movement. The author uses irony to reveal a meaning of heritage hidden under the perceived idea of African-American identity.

Alice Walker as part of Walker’s short story collection, In Love and Trouble, wrote “Everyday Use” in 1973. Taken place in a family farm in Georgia during the literary era of the Harlem Renaissance, the story introduces a wide variety of round and flat characters that illustrate the theme of racism. The author uses everyday objects, such as the quilts, and the reactions of the main characters to these objects to contrast the simple and the practical with the stylish and the faddish. Throughout the piece, the author expresses the difficulties and conflicts of the characters that are trying to find an identity in the midst of everyday prejudice.

Different cultures end up having different views about others and the world. People's views and opinions affect their culture and background. Your culture is just a part of your background. Depending on your culture and background, that affects how you view the world and others. Culture is just another part of you and your background. Different people have different cultures and different viewpoints. Nowadays what you see seems to be what you get no matter how you view the world and others. You all still think the same and act the same way. Culture is a part of you and who you are. No matter where you come from or who you are your culture still defines you.