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…...

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 oppressed African-Americans who went through decades of physical and emotional abuse in order to survive, give birth to and raise future generations -- of which Dee is one. Instead, Walker is emphasizing that it should not only be those involved with the Black Power movement who should define African-American heritage. "African-Americans must take ownership of their entire heritage, including the painful, unpleasant parts (White).

Wangero also dresses in the Africanism fads, thereby only looking like an American who is trying to…...

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References

Christian, Barbara, T. Alice Walker: The Black Woman Artist as Wayward." "Everyday Use. Ed. New Jersey: Rutgers UP, 1994.

Cowart, David. "Heritage and Deracination in Walker's 'Everyday Use.'"

Studies in Short Fiction 33 (1996): 171-184.

Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama and the Essay.

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 to give them to Maggie upon her wedding. Dee is aghast at the suggestion. "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'" (Walker 94). Mama and Maggie see these heirlooms as items that should be used as well as important reminders of the past. Dee only sees their monetary and artistic value.

Near the end of the story, Dee declares these…...

Everyday Use by Alice alker
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 Dee and Maggie, as characters, from triteness.

In addition to the skillful use of the viewpoint, "Everyday Use" is enriched with the development of symbols by Alice alker. Through careful descriptions and settings of the characters in the story, alker confronts the question of what is the true value of one's culture and heritage. In the conflict between Dee and her mother, alker shows that one's culture and heritage is not represented by the external appearances or possession of objects, but…...

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Works Cited

Walker, Alice Everyday Use.

Walker, Alice. Everyday Use (Women Writers) Volume edited and introduced by Barbara T.

Christian. Rutgers University Press

Everyday Use

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 example, at one point, she decides to change her name from Dee to Wangero saying, "I couldn't stand it anymore, being named after the people that oppress me." (488) Dee feels that by adopting an African name, she would be showing more respect to her culture. This was indeed not the approach that older generation approved of. This led to identity crisis for many young African-American people in 1960s as they failed to appreciate their present reality as Americans and…...

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 elty portrays her as a weak character who would rather slap her daughter than hear the truth, it is not a surprise that she takes the path of least resistance and sides with the flashy Stella-Rondo. Her vain foolishness provides a sardonic comedy that colors the tone of the story.
An important difference in the styles of both stories is that they exist for different purposes. Alice alker's story makes an argument for things to remain the same in the lives and…...

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Works Cited

Cassill, R.V., ed. Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 4th Edition. New York:

W.W. Norton and Company, 1989. pp. 819-827.

Welty, Eudora. "Why I Live at the P.O." Retrieved 7/21/06 at bin.com/art/or_weltypostoff.htmlhttp://art-

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 sees as a historical oppression in her own family. For this reason, Dee rejects her own cultural heritage and creates what she sees as a new cultural heritage in her own life. In her story it is reported that Alice Walker "takes up what is a recurrent theme in her work: the representation of the harmony as well as the conflicts and struggles within African-American culture." (Lone Star College System, 2014, p. 1) Her work, "Everyday Use" focuses on the…...

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Bibliography

Eshbaugh, R. (2008) A Literary Analysis of Alice Walker's Short Story Everyday Use: The True Inheritance. Yahoo Voices. 21 Aug 2008. Retrieved from:  http://voices.yahoo.com/a-literary-analysis-alice-walkers-short-story-everyday-1818229.html?cat=44 

Characterization and Symbolism in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" (2014) Lone Star College System. Retrieved from:  http://www.lonestar.edu/13778.htm 

Everyday Use (nd) Alice Walker. Online Retrieved from:  http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/quilt/walker.html

Mama and Maggie's values are simple, their goals mundane yet uplifting at the same time. Dee, on the other hand, is full of spunk and ambition. She views the quilts as if they were anthropological artifacts, remnants not of her grandmother but from some lost civilization. Dee, renamed Wangero, wanted to hang the quilts on the wall like art. Her desire parallels her creative streak and her wacky way of dressing.
The conflict of characters in "Everyday Use" helps Walker execute her central theme of the remarkable changes taking place in the Black community in America. Dee offers hope that the next generation of African-Americans do not live with the scourge of poverty. However, her hopes are not necessarily grounded in reality and the author portrays Dee as being idealistic and naive. Maggie remains close to her mother and to the day-to-day realities of Black life in America. Through their…...

hile she away, she changes her name to "angero Leewanika Kemanjo" (1425) because she will not endure "being named after the people who oppress me" (1425). She is concerned with herself and she seems to only come home to take things back with her, including things like a butter dish and dasher. hen she decides she wants the quilts, she sees no reason why she should not have them, noting "Maggie can't appreciate these quilts!" (1427). Mama suddenly realizes how selfish Dee is when she thinks she deserves certain things because she thinks she can appreciate them more than anyone else can. She moved away to become enlightened and returned a snob. She wants to use every experience, past and present, to enhance her feigned future. She does not care about her family in the least and Maggie's handing over the quilts demonstrates this to the fullest.
"Everyday Use" should…...

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Works Cited

Piedmont-Marton, Elisabeth. "An overview of 'Everyday Use.'" Short Stories for Students.

1997. Gale Resource Database. Site Accessed March 27, 2010.

  Web.http://www.infotrac.galegroup.com 

Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use." The Norton Anthology od Short Fiction. New York: W.W.

And, of course, the main reason why I cited this passage, the images used to give Maggie some "roundness" as a fictional character, the fact that she is compared to a lame animal, an injured dog. The reader finds out that she was burned badly in a fire. The point that Walker is driving home is, Maggie and Dee come from the same place, but are, indeed, two different people.
The question one may ask then is why couldn't Walker have told the story in a linear fashion with different, but equally vivid details? Why did she have to construct it in a non-linear way? There is no clear-cut answer(s) to these types of questions, stories sometimes just happen they way they do. And maybe those are the wrong questions to be asking in the first place. After all, and to continue with the established thesis, the story "works" they…...

Life Lessons in "Everyday Use" and "The Story of an Hour"
Man never seems to learn everything he wants because it seems with every generation, the same lessons need to be learned all over again. Experience is the best teacher, as we all know, but it is interesting to see how some things have changed over the years while others have not. Modernity allows people to have more freedom, as we see with Alice alker's short story, "Everyday Use." Dee benefits from the advancement of society in that she can leave home and attend college. However, just as man seems to make forward strides, some things never change. One of those things is the fact that man has never harnessed the ability to see things as they really are. This inability causes many heartaches because many times, we see only what we want to see. Kate Chopin's story, "The Story of…...

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Work Cited

Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use." The Norton Anthology od Short Fiction. New York W.W. Norton and Company. 1981.

'" (alker, 236)
The making of the quilts is another symbol for the way in which the daughter and the mother differ in their views of tradition. The quilt is also strongly associated with the African-American tradition and therefore all the more significant. hile the mother and Maggie are capable of actually making the quilts, Dee or angero is obsessed with having them and possessing them as a symbol of her identity. Her obsession with everything African is obviously harmful. She believes that emphasizing the past and storing up traditions is what the present is actually made of: "It's really a new day for us. But from the way you and Mama still live you'd never know it."(alker, 239) the mother and Maggie however understand that the quilts should be used, just like the past should be used as a means to learn and develop in the present.

Heritage is thus something…...

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Works Cited

X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama (10th edition). New York: Longman, 2006.

Walker's "Everyday Use" examines a generation clash a family. What Dee (Wangero) implies mother sister " understand" "heritage"? Why suddenly important Dee? Part II: O'Brien's "Going After Cacciato" focuses experience Paul Berlin Vietnam War.
Walker's "Everyday Use"

Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" depicts the two very different life paths of the daughters of the main character. The mother's older daughter Dee is a very ambitious young woman, and the mother notes at the beginning of the story that Dee always disdained hard, manual work in high school, or any association with her African-American family. Dee goes away to college, while her younger sister Maggie remains at home and embraces the types of domestic chores Dee once disdained. However, when Dee comes back from college, she has taken on a new identity and now identifies herself as Afro-centric. All of the things she used to hate, like the hand-carved butter churn and…...

Everyday Use In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” Dee is searching for cultural authenticity but in her search, she latches on to material possessions the relics of her family heritage, thinking these represent the identity she is after. However, Dee’s search is frustrated by her own superficial understanding of what culture really and truly is: she believes it is a construct that can be concocted over night—or re-claimed by way of artifice. The reality is that, as the mother shows, culture comes from the heart and its attachment to one’s true heritage—which is why Maggie is awarded the quilt coveted by Dee. Maggie has the heart to love it because it comes from her family, and she has the sense to make use of it; Dee wants it only because she thinks it represents her ancestral blackness—beyond that it means nothing to her. Mother’s role in awarding the quilt to the most…...

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Works Cited

Baker, Houston A., and Charlotte Pierce-Baker. “Patches: Quilts and Community in Alice Walker’s ‘Everyday Use’.” The Southern Review, vol. 21, no. 3 (1985): 706.

Hoel, Helga. “Personal Names and Heritage: Alice Walker’s ‘Everyday Use’.” American Studies in Scandinavia, vol. 31, no. 1 (1999), 34-42.

Tuten, Nancy. “Alice Walker’s ‘Everyday Use.’” The Explicator, vol. 51, no. 2 (1993), 125-128.

Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.”

http://www.nlsd.k12.oh.us/userfiles/111/Classes/3450/Walker-Everday%20Use.pdf

Everyday Use" By Alice alker
Family tradition and heritage means different things for the main characters in "Everyday Use" by Alice alker. For Dee (angero), heritage is an intellectual exercise, like something to be proud of and displayed so as to show off to others how important you are. But for Maggie and Mama, heritage is that which has been part of the family. For instance, Dee's name was given her by her aunt, who in turn was named after their grandmother and she after hers, and so on. It was a generational name that should have held some traditional significance for Dee -- and Mama points this out, having an actual sense of her family's history and heritage. But Dee is not interested in that heritage: she wants to trumpet her African heritage so she changes her name to signify that she has no relation the slave culture that…...

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Works Cited

Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use."

Thomas Edison's inventions revolutionized the way we live in several ways:

1. Light bulb: Edison's incandescent light bulb brought light into homes, businesses, and streets at all hours of the day, making it easier for people to work, study, and travel after dark.

2. Phonograph: Edison's invention of the phonograph allowed for the recording and playback of sound, transforming the way we listen to music, the radio, and other audio recordings.

3. Motion picture camera: Edison's development of the motion picture camera laid the foundation for the film industry and revolutionized entertainment, communication, and advertising.

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1. When it comes to crafting empowering messages in literature, two short stories that stand out are The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Everyday Use by Alice Walker. Both authors effectively utilize various literary techniques to build up powerful messages that resonate with readers. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman tackles the themes of female oppression and the importance of self-expression, while Everyday Use explores the complexities of heritage and identity. By analyzing the ways in which these authors develop their empowering messages, we can gain valuable insights into how literature can inspire and empower individuals.

2. In The....

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