Dee is the daughter that gets everything she wants all the time. Dee manages to always look fashionable and keep up with the latest trends. Mama tells us that Maggie “thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of her hand, that ‘no’ is a word the world never learned to say to her.” She seems to be very materialistic and thinks she can have anything that she decides she wants. In lines 186-187, Dee says “That’s it! I knew there was something I wanted to ask you if I could have.” Dee knew the answer would be yes before she even asked.
In the short story titled “Everyday Use” written by Alice Walker, the author revolves the story theme on the meaning of heritage. One of the main characters’ characterization changes throughout the plot. The way Maggie behaves is different at the exposition, climax, and resolution of the story. In “Everyday Use”, Maggie is a young woman whose interactions changes along with the lot. She demonstrates in different ways how she’s starting to accept more herself and those surrounding her.
She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground”( 78 Walker). Dee has been always a good looking girl with neat feet, nice-black hair and a fuller figure and light weighted than Maggie. “ She was determined to stare down any disaster i n her efforts” ( 79 Walker). We can realize that the sisters were not alike and that they maybe did not have anything in common. But grandma Dee left them something special as her old quilts.
This is situational irony because the reader expects Dee not to want anything from her home because of how much she despised her home and heritage, but she ends up wanting the butter churn and hand-made quilts. She even says that Maggie would not appreciate the quilts and would put them to “everyday use,” as if Dee adores them. It is also ironic that Dee brings Hakim-a-barber home with her. In the story, Mama refers to the time when Dee wrote her a letter saying that wherever Maggie and Mama chose to live, she would come visit them, but she would not bring her friends. “She wrote me once that no matter where we ‘choose’ to live, she will manage to come see us.
The point of view in the story “Everyday Use,” by Alice Walker plays a big part. Throughout the story, one of Mama’s daughters came to visit. The way Mama and Maggie see her is not in a very pleasant way. In fact, they are scared to tell her no when it comes to anything. From Mama’s perspective Dee seems like this rude, stuck up, spoiled child because she had the opportunity to go out and expand her education, while Mama and Maggie continued to live their lives on the farm.
Everyday Use: What Will Your Ancestors Treasure? In the short story “Everyday Use” Alice Walker takes the reader through a world that was in the midst of a radical change. A time when new affluence was coming to a generation of African Americans. Walker’s generation knew nothing but hardships, and they had to make due with whatever they happened to have around. Therefore, many of the items which Dee and Maggie see in the course of the story have radically different meanings.
Occasion: Alice Walker writes the story to draw attention to the mindset of the minorities. Walker was an activist. “Everyday Use” is a short story within a collection documenting the stories of black women, such as Alice Walker herself. Audience: Walker writes the story for everyone to read. The speaker is uneducated, so the writing in the first person is readable for beginners as well as educated adults.
“Everyday Use” is a short story written by Alice Walker that is about a mother that has two daughters and she is waiting one of the daughter’s to come visit. The mother just goes by the name Mama but the daughters are named Maggie and Dee. The narrator is the Mama in which she gives a vivid explanation about their life in her point of view. Alice Walker uses imagery, allegories, and figure of speech throughout the story to paint a picture into the reader mind of what is taking place and visualize the characters in the story. Maggie seems to be African American.
Both Mrs. Johnson and her daughter Maggie are acquainted with their traditions and honors their ancestors while her other daughter Dee is quite the opposite and more fortunate to be educated. Dee has moved towards other traditions that go against the
The setting of Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” reveals important aspects about the family in many ways. Without the enriched setting provided to the reader by Walker, this story would have had no foundation on which to be built. The first way Walker uses setting to let the reader get to know the family is through the detailed description provided to the reader about the family home in paragraph one. Walker describes the family’s front yard as being an “extended living room” (Walker 417) She includes that the floor is composed of hard clay and sand which leads the reader to assume that the family is from a more poverty stricken region. The reader can make the assumption that the story takes place around the 1960’s during the Civil Rights Movement based off of the quote made by Dee addressing her younger sister Maggie at the end of the story “It’s really a new day for us.