Culture has a prominent effect on the mental image envisioned by the reader in Blue Dancing Winds by Tom Whitecloud and Everyday Use by Alice Walker. In each story, a specific cultural may be observed through the characters' actions, thoughts, surroundings, and speech.
             Native American culture plays deeply in Tom Whitecloud's Blue Winds Dancing. Two critical conflicts occur as a result of culture. First, the narrator does not know if he belongs in a Native American or White culture. Second, will either culture accept him? The Native American culture may not accept him or know him now that he has lived in the White culture. The White culture judges him as inferior not worthy of them. With the use of the un-giving dead concrete world versus the living changing environment of nature, the setting is vividly pictured in the mind's eye. When the choice is made to go back to his culture his people did not reject him while the Whites had. This supports the setting staged in diction, Whites culture versus Native American culture. To live in a concrete world not knowing your neighbor or family or to live as one with nature and be aware of who is there and what they need.
             Clashing cultural standards and cultural point-of-views set a powerful stage from the start in Everyday Use by Alice Walker. The oldest daughter Dee has embraced the Islamic culture and the name Wangero, tempted by city life, material possessions, and social acceptance. The setting here is that she is embarrassed or disgusted with the way her mother provides for her (the shabby house and manly way her mother looks and works) and Maggie (her sister). Dee comes back home to visit and asks for heirlooms that in the city are valued from the culture she has rejected. Dee expresses that Maggie will use the heirlooms instead of preserving them for value. To these charges, her mother says, "I reckon she would [use the quilts daily] ...God knows I've been saving (the quilts) for lo...