The Color Purple By Alice Walker

In Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use,” the author takes up what is a persistent subject in her work: the illustration of the coherence as well as the conflicts and struggles within African-American culture. “Everyday Use” focuses on an encounter between family members. This reunion takes place when Dee and her boyfriend return to visit Dee’s mother and her sister Maggie. The author uses symbolism to emphasize the difference between both daughters and illustrates that culture and heritage are parts of daily life.

Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” is a short, yet powerful story about a simple, rural family that’s changed with the return of one of the daughters. Maggie and “Mama” continue to keep the tradition of a simple and hardworking life that seems to be passed down from generations, but we see that Dee has been a black sheep since a young age and holds resentment toward her family because of their lifestyle. Mama was raised into this lifestyle and has become satisfied and happy with it. With her man-ish skills she readily adopts the chores of the life she’s accepted, but like any parent, wants the best she possible can for her dear daughters. Maggie, like her mother, lacks many natural gifts like beauty or brains,

Alice Walker’s story “Everyday Use” is a story decipating family and heritage. She released the story with a collection of other short stories called In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. This collection revealed Walker to be one of the finest of late twentieth century American short-story writers (Phy-Olsen). According to Cowart, the story address itself “to the dilemma of African Americans who are striving to escape prejudice and poverty.” One of the main characters, Dee, made drastic changes and would like her mother and sister to see things her way. Dee’s statement to her mother and sister regarding their disregard of heritage is very ironic considering the fact her name is a part of the family’s history, her new behavior, and her

In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” , Walker juxtaposes two different daughters in their quest for a cultural identity. The narrator, their mother, talks about how each daughter is different; Dee went off to college and became well-educated, contrary to their impoverished and low status as black women in the south. Meanwhile, Maggie has is not-so-well-educated, but can still read. The entire story centers around Dee’s visit back home and is told through their mother. The story’s climax is when Dee wants to take two special quilts back home, but those quilts are for Maggie. These quilts are gigantic representation of their culture. Dee does not deserve to take the quilts with her because she has decided to take on a culture that varies significantly from hers and it she is very ungrateful toward her mother and sister.

Many African-American quilts that were made after the Civil War and emancipation were made from scraps of clothing and other like materials. Born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, Alice Walker grew up as the youngest sibling in a poor family. As a Civil Rights activist, Walker fought for the equality of all African-Americans. She is best known for her novel The Color Purple which was published in 1982. In 1973, she released the story collection In Love and Trouble which included the short story “Everyday Use.” Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” displays the theme of the meaning of heritage through irony and symbolism.

When analyzing Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use,” tells a story about a mother’s internal conflict with her two daughters, which later depicts the struggle of accepting one’s true ancestries and heritage. The setting of this short story is set in the 1970s when African Americans were struggling to find their personal identities and establish themselves a culture. As Mama, the

When The Color Purple is viewed through the gender/feminist lens, the traditional ways society understands men and women is dramatically altered. Alice Walker defies gender norms with her emphasis on the fact that gender and sexuality are not always as simple as society typically thought. By creating characters that challenge gender stereotypes and break out of the norms of society, she creates a book that dissolves gender barriers. With her use of strong, unique characters, Alice is able to change the way people viewed women and men. Characters like Shug Avery and Harpo defy the gender roles expected of them, and influence those around them to change their roles in society as well. While there are characters that reflect gender norms,

The award-winning novel, “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker, is a story about a woman going through cruel things such as: incest, rape, and physical abuse. This greatly written novel comes from a very active feminist author who used many of her own experiences, as well as things that were happening during that era, in her writing. “The Color Purple” takes place in the early 1900's, and symbolizes the economic, emotional, and social deprivation that African American women faced in Southern states of America. The main character of the story is Celie, a fourteen-year old that starts writing letters to God for thirty years, and then to her sister, Nette, who ran away to Africa to save herself from the troubles Celie went through. Celie starts off as a pushover and very dependent girl that would eventually grow and develop into an independent flourishing woman that opens a business making pants for all genders. This novel shows the hardship of a girl becoming a woman over the course of her life and eventually standing up for herself and being confident. Many of the experiences and characters of “The Color Purple” are based on history of that time and a bit of the author’s personal experiences. Her use of epistolary allows the reader to learn everything in the point of view of Celie. Alice Walker's influences for writing this novel range from her childhood experiences to the white society in her hometown of Eatonville, Georgia. Even during these times, it still shows that women

The Color Purple by Alice Walker starts off with a rather graphic view of a young black woman denominated as Celie. Celie has to learn how to survive her abusive past. She also has to figure out a way she can release her past in search of the true meaning of love. Alice walker wrote this book as an epistolary novel to further emphasize Celie`s life events. From the beginning of the novel Alice Walker swiftly establishes an intimate contact with the reader. The book begins with a eloquent and lucid record of the physical abuse Celie`s father subjected her to. Even in Celie`s dark moments she is still able to find hope.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker is a story written in 1982 that is about the life struggles of a young African American woman named Celie. The novel takes the reader through several main topics including the poor treatment of African American women, domestic abuse, family relationships, and also religion. The story takes place mostly in rural Georgia in the early 1900’s and demonstrates the difficult life of sharecropper families. Specifically how life was endured from the perspective of an African American woman. The Color Purple is written in the form of letters that Celie narrates explaining the events that took place at certain points in her life. Celie endures physical and emotional abuse by some of the people around her including

In her short story, “Everyday Use” Alice Walker attempts to address the struggles and conflict that are present in the African American culture. This short story is based on an encounter between the members of a rural African American family. Dee, who is the main character in the story has just returned home to visit her mother and younger sister Maggie. Notably, she is the only member of the family to receive a formal education. In the effort to describe the encounter, Alice Walker uses characterization on Dee who is one of the main characters in the short story.

In Alice Walker’s classic short story Everyday Use, Walker takes her readers through a yester-year, yet contemporary African American experience in the rural southern America; A dynamic human experience that takes roots in despair, oppression, and resilience. In this first-person narration, our narrator anxiously awaits the arrival of her daughter, but in the meantime, we’re brought along a recollection of rough times of our narrator’s family. Through Mama’s memories, and dialogue with Dee, a theme of cultural conflict is revealed. Mama’s recollection of the past and her dreams reveals to the reader how tough life has been growing in the south. In Mama’s narration, we learned that her education level did not progress past second grade due to

The Color Purple by Alice Walker is a novel about the struggle of Celie, a poor uneducated black woman who finds herself with the help of a blues singer named Shug Avery. Each character plays a major role in the strengthening of each other. From the beginning of the novel the characters of Celie, Nettie and Sofia either became stronger or lost strength through tough times. Nettie who is Celie's sister was very intellectual and recognized the importance of an education from a young age. Sofia is an assertive woman who has never backed down from a fight yet her assertiveness and her honesty and willingness to act on emotions gets her jail time.

It gives a vivid insight into the everyday struggles of an African American female living in south of America in the twentieth century. Alice Walker, the author, was dedicated to her education and graduated with degrees from two different universities. Throughout her time in school, Walker became frustrated with the lack of literature on the culture and history of the black experience, so she challenged educational institutions to create a representative curriculum. In the 1960s, Walker became involved in the civil rights movement. Her experiences became the basis for six excellent novels such as The Color Purple which received 11 movie nominations. Walker remains very active politically, championing women’s issues and women’s work. Walker coined the term womanist, a word she derived from the common phrase “you’re acting womanish.” Walker defines womanist as “a woman who loves other women sexually or non-sexually and men sexually and non sexually. A woman is to feminist as lavender is to purple.” The Color Purple was so controversial,perhaps it is due to guilt over a dark period in North America development; or perhaps it’s the realization that despite all of our achievements and progress, the sort of depravity depicted in the novel is still alive and well in 21st century

The author Alice Walker was an African-American poet, writer, and novelist whose writing is influenced by her life experiences and current events. Walker is a black feminist author who wrote the short story Everyday Use. This story is about a woman, Mrs. Johnson, whose daughter Dee, along with her supposed fiancé, is coming home for the first time after and moving to New York. When Dee comes home, she tries to change things about their life to bring them into the ‘modern age’. She tells her mom and sister Maggie that their family heirlooms are not meant for ‘everyday use’ and that only she can put them to their proper use. The Johnson family does not have a lot of money or possessions, similar to Walker’s early life. Alice Walker’s life is related to the story, because she modeled the characters after herself and the people she knew. Walker had a childhood injury, which made her similar to shy and timid Maggie. As well, she was the valedictorian of her high school class (“Alice Walker Biography”) and went to college out of her town, which makes her similar to Dee. Current events also impact the novel because there are many worldly incidences going on at the time that influence her life story and views. For example, the civil rights movement, black power movement, desegregation of schools and colleges, and the racism going on in the south all affected her life and the story. Alice Walker’s pride in being African-American, her experiences with being an outsider, and the strong black women in her life influence the themes and characters in her story “Everyday Use”.