Verified Document

Everyday Use Essay

Everyday Use by a. Walker Order Alice Walker

There have and are well-known authors that literature students are introduced to and discussed because of the intensity, reasons, persona, and literary devices that the authors add to works they publish. Using writing techniques, like Alice Walker has done in "Everyday Use" she originally wrote in 1973, she sets the scene from a place in her time when she was living life and facing the facts and realities of prejudice people in America that were directly mean to her for being an African-American. However, when Walker went to these extremes for her readers, she became one of many of the bestselling novelists in which some of her work turned in to motion pictures like her major fiction The Color Purple A Native to Georgia, Walker, as an African-American her main themes to the stories she chose to write about had a lot to do with the reflection of living in America as a black woman who wanted to be treated like her white native neighbors and have equal rights like the whites had over blacks at one time. Her creative writing skills were from gender issues, children's stories, nonfiction, fiction, poetry, abuse to women through mutilation, and racial stories from her own persona that she has in writing what she does. However, before her hit the story Everyday Use in 1973, begins with the storyline that starts out with Mama, an African-American women living during the 1950s and 1960s when segregation was highly common and tolerated, who is standing out in the yard awaiting for her daughter, Dee to come to her house to visit even though she knows that her other daughter, Maggie is anxious about Dee's arrival and insecure about the scars, burns, and other cruel marks that made Dee's life seem easier than her sister's that still had a pretty simple life that Maggie really envied. However, Mama was constantly dreaming of Dee and Maggie getting along when Dee arrived in hopes for her to stay, however, Mama knows during hard times in society and within her home along with how the poverty and unequal human rights were a main stress...

While Walker talks in third person she does an exceptional well job of imagining how a mother would act during this time in history, and why the Mama character would have different fantasies about her daughter Dee coming home and embracing her because she remembers a time over 10 years ago when their house burned to the ground and she struggled getting Maggie safe, and that is why Maggie still had evident severe burns because back then there was no removing scars just watching them fade and get smaller.
The plots that occur in this story is appropriate for the era of time that this supposed story was supposed to have happened in, and nowadays there is more ways to help low income households and single parents, like Mama, that can help in addition to her community to find a way to come up with enough funding to see to it that Dee made it to a school in Augusta. Yet, Mama is furious with her daughter, Dee, her looks, her different ethnic looking boyfriend, and appalled by what she is wearing when they finally arrive. In those days a mother felt that what her daughter did outside the home, how she dressed, her attitude, and everything else was expected that the child act as they are setting an example for how they were raised so they won't be thought less of. Over the past half century, couples who have had children have became less worried about where their children and their safety and what are they doing and if they are behaving as each generation becomes teenagers and more on their own, yet Mama tries to control Maggie and Dee's attitudes toward one another, and she is proper like women were back then by not saying…

Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Everyday Use, Walker When Reading
Words: 1115 Length: 3 Document Type: Term Paper

Instead, Wangero continues to only see that her name is a reminder that African-Americans were denied their authentic names. "I couldn't bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me" (53). Walker is not by any means condemning the Black Power movement when she challenges Wangero's viewpoint. Instead, she is questioning that part of this movement that does not acknowledge and, more importantly, respect the scores of

Everyday Use in Alice Walker's
Words: 445 Length: 1 Document Type: Term Paper

Dee is not interested in family history; she is interested in making an artistic statement. The discussion of the butter churn is merely a prelude to the big event over the quilts. The quilts are sewn together of fabrics from ancestors' clothing. This association makes them important reminders of family to Maggie and Mama. However, these two see the practical or everyday value of the items as well. Mama intends

Everyday Use by Alice Walker the Thematic
Words: 650 Length: 2 Document Type: Term Paper

Everyday Use by Alice Walker The thematic richness of "Everyday Use" is made possible by the perceptive, and flexible voice of the first-person narrator. It is the mother's viewpoint that permits the reader to understand both Dee and Maggie. Seen from a distance, both young women seem stereotypical - one a smart but rather ruthless college girl, the other a sweet but ineffectual homebody. The close scrutiny of the mother redeems

Everyday Use by Alice Walker
Words: 853 Length: 3 Document Type: Term Paper

However what the older generation knew about the worth of heritage had somehow escaped the youth. The elders felt that adoption of culture and heritage made more sense when it had an impact on a person's way of thinking and their lifestyle. Dee, with a more modern approach towards heritage, felt an identity based on it could be adopted with the adoption of 'things' connected with her ancestors' culture. For

Everyday Use and Why I
Words: 1257 Length: 4 Document Type: Term Paper

The solid fact that Sister has remained a fixture in the house and should have the greater claim to her mother's attention is dazzled away by the return of Stella-Rondo. The mother's indecision and vacillation is somewhat comic as she continues to insist that "I prefer to take my children's word for anything when it's humanly possible" (5). Deciding which child to believe is her character's conflict. Because Welty

Everyday Use by Alice Walker
Words: 1724 Length: 5 Document Type: Research Proposal

Cultural Impacts in Everyday Use The objective of this study is to examine the work of Alice Walker entitled "Everyday Use" and the how culture impacts values and material objects and the manner in which culture in reality impacts people and their lifestyle. The work of Alice Walker entitled "Everyday Use" examines the connotations of culture on material objects. The story involves a woman named Dee who is disgusted with what she

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now