"Everyday Use": Understanding heritage
With the short story, "Everyday Use", Alice Walker shows two very different concepts of remembering heritage. She does this by using the two daughters in the story as foils. They are extremely different characters in just about every way imaginable, from their appearance to the way that they behave, and they each have very opposing ways in which they celebrate their heritage. This story shows how a mother rejects her older and seemingly successful daughters surface values and comes to agree with her younger daughters more practical view of her heritage. Walker is also able to give us this view of conflict between the sisters by telling the story through the mother's perspective. This way we are able to look at the two daughters and their faults through the eyes of the loving mother. Being able to show the two daughters in a non-judgmental way allows us to see that although Dee is confused with her opinions, she is not completely wrong and she does mean well. This story tells us that these quilts are a very valid art form that should be honored and respected in that matter, but also that they also should not just be put up on a shelf to be admired from a distance, but kept close and continued on with tradition and remembrance i
The mother in this story has no ill feelings towards Dee. When reading, "Everyday Use" and other stories by Walker such as, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, you really get the opinion of how Walker perceives the so called, "everyday" activities of the women in her stories. While Dee believes that she is becoming closer to her ancestors by changing her name, she is actually rejecting the name of the people that are directly related to her. She believes that an African-American woman's everyday work should be viewed and respected as a valued art form, yet it must be kept close to the heart and to the family that it came from. Not kept at a distance as the character Dee would have done. Alice Walker tells us with this story that we need to keep our family ties close to us. These blankets are used all of the time, they have been consistently used since she made them. I believe that these are the kinds of ideals that Walker is trying to get across in this story through the character of Maggie. My mothers' recipe for piecrust is a well-known thanksgiving tradition. They mostly consist of family recipes. Dee does not want the others because they were partially stitched by machine. The point-of-view of Maggie and her mother in this story are very similar, more similar to each other than to Dee. Each daughter has two very different ideas on how these quilts should be treated. Then Maggie says that Dee can have the quilts because she can remember her grandmother without them. But she also believes that you need to have a close relationship to your family's history and not separate yourself from it the way that the character Dee does.
Common topics in this essay:
Alice Walker,
Mothers' Gardens,
Dee Dee,
Maggie Dee,
Dee Maggie,
Walker Dee,
Maggie Maggie's,
dee believes,
,
dee believes quilts,
dee quilts,
art form,
kept close,
dee confused,
traditions passed,
mother tells,
character dee,
able daughters,
remembering heritage,
|
Acceptance Essays
