Everyday Use By Alice Walker Analysis

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“Everyday Use”, written by Alice Walker, is a story about a mother with two daughters. The one who is speaking throughout the story is the mother. The two daughters are Maggie and Dee. Dee is described as “lighter, nice hair, and a fuller figure” (Walker). She goes off to school to further her education, and when she returns, she has a new last name and is accompanied by a boyfriend. Maggie on the other hand is described as “large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands…fat that keeps [her] hot in zero weather.., and a brain like an elephants” (Walker). Instead of Maggie going off to further her education, she stayed at home with her mother where they had a more simplistic lifestyle. With the two girls being different in so many ways,…show more content…
Maggie hung back in the kitchen over the dishpan. Out came Wangero with two quilts. They had been pieced by grandma Dee and then Big Dee and me had hung them on the quilt frames on the front porch and quilted them. One was in the Lone Star pattern. The other was Walk around the Mountain. In both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarrell’s paisley shirts. And…show more content…
Web 15 Feb. 2015. Dee, having gone off to school, has developed a less sentimental attitude toward her family’s heirlooms than her sister had. It has always been said that those with a higher level of education are less likely to appreciate the sentimental side of things. Dee has that exact mentality and attitude towards the quilts. Dee’s non-appreciative attitude towards the handmade quilts appeared very quickly in the short story. In the lines, “I didn't want to bring up how I had offered Dee a quilt when she went away to college. Then she had told they were old-fashioned, out of style” (Walker) furthers the author‘s point about how unattached Dee really is to her family’s priceless heirlooms. Going through the story, Dee tells her mother that she no longer wants to be called Dee, “’What happened to 'Dee'?’ I wanted to know. ‘She's dead,’ Wangero [Dee]. ‘I couldn't bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me’" (Walker). She continues to go off on a tangent believing that her name is derived from white people. This line of thinking is what ultimately causes her to think that the quilts would be better served as wall decoration and memorabilia towards those that oppressed her race and her
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