In "Everyday Use," by Alice Walker, the story is about a hardworking mother of two daughters and how the mother rejects her older and seemingly successful daughter's surface values and comes to agree with her younger daughter's more practical values regarding their heritage. The girls, Maggie and Dee, growing up together under the same conditions, are two very distinct individuals with contrasting views regarding their past, present and future. And not only are they extremely different characters in their values and viewpoints, but in their physical appearance as well. Maggie is a shy girl that keeps her "chin on her chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle" and has scars that mark her arms and face because of the terrible fire she survived. The mother remembers how she carried Maggie out of the burning flames from the house and how pitiful and scared she looked. Conversely, Dee was standing underneath a tree watching contently as the house she was embarrassed of, burned to the ground. The oldest daughter, Dee, is portrayed as stylish, educated, and sophisticated, with lighter skin, nicer hair and a fuller figure. The mother states "at sixteen she had a style of her own; and knew what style was." Despite the mother's explanation of her daughter's name being passed down from generation-to-generation, Dee wants to be her own person and not associated with being named after the people who oppressed her, so she takes the tribal name Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo.
             The ownership of the quilts becomes symbolic of the story's theme. In a way, they represent the past of the women in the family because they had been worked on by two generations. Dee desires the quilts for their financial and artistic value. "But they're priceless!" she exclaims, when she learns that her mother has already promised them to Maggie. Dee argues that Maggie is "backward enough to p...