Essay On Symbolism In Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'

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Caleb Jasper Professor Schreiber ENGL 1022 26 March 2015 Short Stories Part 3 I believe that the literary term that best applies to “Everyday Use,” by Alice Walker, is symbolism. The quilts were the items of symbolism in this story, and they symbolized different things for different people. For Mama, they symbolized only the good times in their family: the times that they were able to spend with each-other having good times while they were making these quilts. And they mean the same if not more than that to Maggie. This can be seen when Mama stated, “They had been pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee and I had hung them on the quilt frames on the front porch and quilted them” (Walker 172). To these characters in the story, the quilts were a symbol of good times, being able to overcome the oppression black people like…show more content…
To her, the quilts still represented the fact that her family, accompanied by all of the other black families of that time, had overcome these things. But, to her, they were not representative of the good times, they represented the bad times in their history, and so she wanted to frame them and make them a symbol to others of how her family had overcome those times so that others who saw it framed should be impressed with her and her heritage. They were not a symbol of good times for her; they were a symbol of the bad times. In the story “Young Goodman Brown,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Goodman Brown was faced with a definite dilemma throughout the entire story. His dilemma was whether or not he would succumb to the dark and the evil ways of the devil. In the beginning of the story, he was faced with the issue of whether or not he would go into the woods. If he were to go into the woods, he would be committing to a meeting with the devil. Mr. Brown knew from the beginning that what he was doing was not right; he stated, “What a wretch am I, to leave her on such an
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