Alice Walker Everyday Use Analysis

781 Words4 Pages
Everyday use For starting, the author of the story “Everyday use” Alice Walker is one of the most censored writers in American Literature. She’s a dark skinned girl with a wounded eye and melted ears. She’s a mother who is taking the whole responsibility of her children. Because of the scar tissue formed over her wounded eye, Alice became a self-conscious and painfully shy. Alice referred to two of the characters to be like her, Mama and Maggie. The main characters of “Everyday use” are Mama, Maggie and Dee. Mama is the narrator of the story. She described herself as a big-boned woman with very rough hands. She takes the role of the father and mother of her two daughters, as her husband was dead. She is poor and uneducated. Maggie, Mama’s younger girl, is shy, shuffles when she walks and has no self-confidence because of the scars in her body caused by the fire in her old house. She’s good-hearted and kind. She loves her sister so much but also she is a little bit jealous of her. Dee is Mama’s older daughter. She’s beautiful, educated and very arrogant. She named herself Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo. "She's dead," Wangero said. "I couldn't bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me." (143-144: Everyday use) That shows us that Dee named herself Wangero because her name “Dee” was a slave name, and she…show more content…
Quilts are mainly the center of interest in “Everyday use”. Dee asked Mama to have the two quilts that belong to Maggie because they are handmade while the other quilts are machine-made. She was not interested in them in the past but now she thinks they are priceless and she wants to hang them at her home. "But they're priceless!" she was saying now, furiously; for she has a temper. "Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they'd be in rags. Less than that!" (244-246: Everyday use). Mama got upset of her request. She took the quilts out of her hands and gave them to
Open Document