Theme Of Everyday Use And The Lottery

Everyday Use is one of Alice Walker’s short stories which published at 1973. It tells about Mama, Maggie and Dee. Mama and Maggie lived in the middle of pasture and both of them are still bound to their family tradition, and Dee is Mama’s educated daughter. The story tells the arriving of Dee along with Hakim-A-Barber. When they’re about to eat, Dee asks a few goods from Mama and one of them is the Quilt. Quilt in the story is their family heritage. The presence of Dee along with her knowledge and the quilt itself represent an Irony as an element of literature. The story shows that Dee’s knowledge can transform in to an irony because she doesn’t have a true understanding about the heritage and the family tradition itself.

Standing up for what is right is not an easy task, but it is necessary to protect those who can not defend themselves. “Everyday Use” is about Mama and her decision to choose sentimental values over materialism. Dee is the educated yet selfish sister of Maggie, who is self conscious and withdrawn because she had been scarred by a house fire. After a very long time, Dee returns to her home in search of materialistic goods so that she can preserve her family’s heritage by turning their culture into a commodity. Dee believes that possessing items with traditional value will allow her to understand her cultural heritage, and this symbolizes her misconception of viewing heritage as a material entity. However, Mama and Maggie clearly defines family and cultural heritage through their knowledge of everyday traditional practices, such as churning butter and quilting. Maggie and Dee are sisters, but they are like the two ends of a stick. Although they have been brought up in the same home and raised by the same mother, this is as far as their similarities

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.

Society today sees the lottery as an easy way to win a ginormous amount of cash just by buying a little slip of paper with a combination of numbers. The irony that Shirley Jackson uses in her short story, The Lottery, is used to the extreme by not only the title being ironic, but also within the story. The lottery is seen as a way to gain cash, but the ironic part of the title is that the reader sees it and thinks that the story will be about someone winning a big prize, yet the winner is sentenced to being stoned to death. Within the story, Shirley Jackson writes about how one member of the community ultimately chooses who wins the lottery. Another ironic thing about someone chooses the winner is that one of the communities sons picked his own father to win the lottery. Linda Wagner-Martin analyzes The Lottery and its irony by writing, “Bringing in the small children as she does, from early in the story (they are gathering stones, piling them up where they will be handy, and participating in the ritual as if it were a kind of play), creates a poignance not only for the death of Tessie the mother, but for the sympathy the crowd gives to the youngest Hutchinson, little Dave. Having the child draw his own slip of paper from the box reinforces the normality of the occasion, and thereby adds to Jackson's irony. It is family members, women and children, and fellow residents who are being killed through this orderly, ritualized process. As Jackson herself once wrote, "I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the story's

The story 'Everyday Use', written by Alice Walker, is a story of heritage, pride, and learning what kind of person you really are. In the exposition, the story opens with background information about Dee and Maggie's life, which is being told by Mama. The reader learns that Dee was the type of child that had received everything that she wanted, while Maggie was the complete opposite. The crisis, which occurs later in the story, happens when Dee all of a sudden comes home a different person than she was when she left. During the Climax, Mama realizes that she has often neglected her other child, Maggie, by always giving Dee what she wants. Therefore, in the resolution, Mama defends Maggie by telling Dee that she cannot have the

Authors can utilize setting in different ways such as a time and a place. Setting as a place has other components that make an author’s work flourish. One example is the indication of setting. Authors usually indicate where the plot is taking place so that the audience is not lost and has an idea of where the action is happening. This leads to the next element of setting as a place, which would be the significance. The significance of place has a great impression on the characters and the audience’s interpretations. With the significance of place the audience can usually question how different the story would be if it took part elsewhere, thus exemplifying the importance of the certain setting. Also, setting as a place indicates what the

"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker was a story that concentrated on the relationship that the mother had with her daughters. The story began with Dee, who arrived wearing traditional African clothes, and with a Muslim boyfriend named, Asalamalakin. Dee changed her name to Wangero because as Dee said, "I couldn't bear it any longer being named after the people who oppress me." Dee was taking pictures of the house when she saw the handmade quilt that her grandmother had made. Dee wanted the quilt; however, Mama had already promised the quilt to Maggie.

What does one picture when the word lottery is said? A random selection and a person wins the big prize? Wrong, in the short story “The Lottery” all townspeople gather for a special kind of lottery. Not just any lottery though, one that is quite unique like no other. The townspeople and their families pick up white slips of folded white paper out of a black wooden box. Later to then open them and to find only one has a dark charcoal circle who later gets stoned to death annually.

The short story “Everyday Use” Is a story about a mother who is a strong hard working woman. She has two daughters, Maggie and Dee. Maggie is timid and shy from the scars she bears due to a fire that happened in their previous house. Dee, is spoiled, educated, and is motivated to leave her sister Maggie and her mother. After Dee is finally old enough to leave the house, she ventures in to the reality of the world and completely forgets about her mother and sister. After many years of being away she sends a letter to her mother saying she is coming to visit. She finally came home with a man of her influences. While at home she starts plundering through items in the house until she finds two quilts that have a significant meaning towards Maggie. When Maggie overheard the conversation about Dee wanting to take the quilts, she gave a look to her sister Dee that made her mother realize how long she had been wrong about her daughter all this time. A

“Everyday Use,” centers on the mothers attitude and realization about her two daughters, Dee and Maggie. The two daughters have different outlooks on their heritage. The outlooks the two daughters have become troubling situation in the short story. Dee comes home from college, and rummages through her mother’s things looking for décor for her apartment. Dee finds two quilts and asks to take them home with her to hang them on her apartment walls. The mother denies Dee’s request and instead offers to give Maggie the quilts because she will put them to “everyday use” instead of using them for just wall décor. Dee is furious and tells her mother and Maggie that they do not understand their heritage. Although, some would say that Dee’s intentions were genuine, it is evident that the interpretation in the story signifies that her desires were materialistic and insincere.

The story “Everyday Use” begins with the Mother cleaning up the yard, describing how nice the yard is and how it’s like another room. Then the Mother proceeds to inform the reader about her 2 daughters and her life story. The action starts once Dee arrives with her husband, and attempts to take all the valuable family possessions for decorations in her house. However the last straw was when Dee attempted to take the two family quilts her Grandma had put together. Originally,

Everyday Use by Alice Walker was written during the 60s and 70s when African-Americans were fighting for their rights and trying to define their personal identities in cultural terms. The main purpose in the story is to challenge the Black Power movement and black people in general, to recognize and respect their American heritage. The story builds conflict between mother and daughter as well as the different views about the heritage meaning for the family, two sisters portray their opposing family views on what they see to be heritage. The impression that a quilt is a part of a family's history is what the narrator is trying to point out.

The setting is one of the most important elements in a story. A setting is where and when the story takes place.  The setting affects the story’s atmosphere, mood and everything the characters say and do.  Characters respond to and interact with the setting of the story. The setting can also dictate what kind of conflict the characters may have in the story and how it will be resolved.

Everyday Use is one of her prevalent and sublime short stories in which she addresses the problems of African and Americans who were attempting to characterize their individual personalities in social terms. The story goes around a few issues of legacy which build a clash between the characters of the story, each with diverse purpose of perspectives. Walker 's utilization of image of "Quilts" and the distinction of comprehension the legacy of family, in the middle of Mama and Maggi with Dee, makes a remarkable story

The story “Everyday Use,” written by Alice Walker, is told by “Mama” who in the beginning of the story is waiting for her daughter Dee to arrive home. Little did Dee’s mother know that she had so much hatred of the place that she had come from. Her other daughter Maggie was not as fond of her sister Dee like her mother was. Maggie was